University Giving Students Mobile Phones
from the cool,-but-will-anyone-use-it? dept
Marshall University is apparently the latest in a string of colleges and universities that have decided to drop landlines for their students. When students reach their dorms this fall, instead they'll find mobile phones waiting for them. The University just build new dorms, and after noticing how hard mobile phone companies were competing to get (and keep) customers, officials decided to use that to their advantage. The students will pay $30/month for unlimited local and long distance (voicemail costs extra). The phones are handed out by the university (even if they already have their own) and must be handed back at the end of the year. Also, the phones will only work within thirty miles of the campus. The reporter also talks to other universities experimenting with similar programs or at least thinking about them. What I wonder, is how many students will come to campus with a mobile phone already in their pockets - and how likely are they to use the University issued ones?
Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.
While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.
–The Techdirt Team
