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Re: Phones in the residence halls

daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Kimberly Doss-Cortes)
Wed Feb 10 13:51:21 2016

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Date:         Wed, 10 Feb 2016 10:50:58 -0800
Reply-To: Resnet Forum <RESNET-L@LISTSERV.ND.EDU>
From: Kimberly Doss-Cortes <kim.doss@MENLO.EDU>
To: RESNET-L@LISTSERV.ND.EDU
In-Reply-To:  <CAMUtijzNi4MpCaEUkgwstTshnXKGSBji8t_job2VXFkfD9tYYQ@mail.gmail.com>

Cell phones are precisely why we provide no phone lines in student rooms. We
do have on-campus staff/faculty housing. We provide VoIP phones in those
residences that are just like the ones we provide in our offices. I have
never had a student complaint. Since I’m the one who configures, deploys and
supports the VoIP system on campus, I’m sure I would have heard if the
students were upset about this.

Kim Doss
Help Desk Supervisor
(650) 543-3840


From: Resnet Forum [mailto:RESNET-L@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of Henry
Joseph
Sent: Tuesday, February 09, 2016 7:47 PM
To: RESNET-L@LISTSERV.ND.EDU
Subject: Re: Phones in the residence halls

I fixed that permission error.  Thank you for the detailed reply Frank.
That is great information and that was 3 years ago so I would think even
more students have cell phones these days and wouldn't miss the wired phones
in the rooms.

Thank you,
*Henry Joseph <mailto:henry.joseph@stonybrook.edu> | Stony Brook University*
Assistant Director | U.I.S.- Campus Residences
Division of Information Technology

On Tue, Feb 9, 2016 at 10:22 PM, Frank Sweetser <fs@wpi.edu> wrote:
I'm getting a permission denied error from that survey, but I'm happy to
share here in email =)

We re-evaluated our residential phone situation three years ago, as a result
of planning a high density wireless refresh.  Our telecom guys looked at
utilization stats, and found them to be only a few percent - and almost all
of that was our residential advisers who are required to have a phone as
part of their job.  In the end, we decided that students would rather have
WiFi than dial tone, and re-purposed the phone lines as in-room APs.

In the end, it's worked out quite well.  We haven't received a single
complaint about lack of POTS lines, and people are a lot happier with the
wireless.  We have since put up a new "higher end" dorm (apartment style
housing) with no analog lines at all.  (Anecdotally, for many years now
we've had a lot more people asking why that last ethernet port doesn't work,
than we've had people asking what their phone number is.)

There were a few key points that helped it go smoothly for us:

 - We gave Residential Services plenty of heads up, so they'd be prepared to
handle questions from parents.

 - We already had a strong IP phone deployment in place.

 - Residential Advisers who had to have land line phones were issued basic
model IP phones.  We did this because a good portion of the students that
did have land lines only did so because they were forced to by their
parents.

 - We were prepared to offer students IP phones at a nominal rental fee, but
we've had zero requests.  They're all happy to just stick with their cell
phones.

 - No buildings were split configuration - once we started in on a building,
we ensured that all in-room analog lines were taken out of service.

 - Out of service jacks were removed or stuffed into the electrical box, and
replaced with a blank plate.  We wanted to make sure we didn't leave behind
any jack locations that no longer had service available.

 - We made sure that there were wall mounted phones available on every
residential floor (either POTS or IP depending on what was easier) to
account for the few students without cell phones, and for emergency calls.

Obviously the final decision will depend on other factors, like the usage
patterns of your own student population and quality of cell services, but
given cell phone population and the cost of copper I'd highly recommend
seriously looking at ditching the analog lines.

Frank Sweetser fs at wpi.edu    |  For every problem, there is a solution
that
Manager of Network Operations   |  is simple, elegant, and wrong.
Worcester Polytechnic Institute |           - HL Mencken

On 2/9/2016 9:52 PM, Henry Joseph wrote:
Hello RESNET,

I am reaching out to you all today not for technical assistance, but just
information on what progress has been made with traditional phone service in
your residence halls.  Does your University still provide phone service and
would you add it to new buildings going forward?  Please take a few seconds
and reply using the survey link below.  I can share the final list with
anyone
who might benefit from this information.

Phones in the residence halls survey(3 questions)
https://docs.google.com/a/stonybrook.edu/forms/d/1_cLK7ILpP2_NRMs4sVtRkEfCR3rZTNjVJGhjMDMaVQk/viewform

The reason I am asking this is that Stony Brook University is building a
new residence hall today and we're curious to see if we really need to place
phones in all the rooms.

Thank you,
*Henry Joseph <mailto:henry.joseph@stonybrook.edu> | Stony Brook University*
Assistant Director | U.I.S.- Campus Residences
Division of Information Technology

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