Jeffrey C. Long

Another article on how cell phone usage is changing the world we live in. This time economically.

Colleges’ Land Lines Nearing Silent End:

The Washington Post reports that across the country, wired phones are becoming obsolete in colleges. Although not many colleges have eliminated them, “almost every major school is evaluating it,” said Jeri Semer, executive director of the Association for Communications Technology Professionals in Higher Education.

This transformation of campus culture — cell phones keeping students closely tied to friends and family, making social life fluid, even intruding on professors’ lectures — also poses a financial challenge for administrators. Land-line phones used to bring in money for many schools. Now some find themselves paying to maintain systems that students rarely use.

[...] Five years ago, the school made hundreds of thousands of dollars a year on long-distance service, said Carl Whitman, executive director of the Office of Information Technology. Last semester, the school made $1,109.”

Related:

– Hotels lose money to cell phones – Cellphones have taken a huge bite out of their earnings. Thanks largely to the preponderance of portables, the profits from in-room phones dropped 76 percent.