Changes to student services for fall
August 14, 2009
OIT has announced a series of changes to student services to help control expenses, leverage alternative technologies and recoup costs for services bought from outside vendors.
In general, our strategy to invest in newer technologies is allowing us to reduce the amount we dedicate to maintaining dated technologies, explained Angel Wingate, assistant vice president for OIT's Communications Infrastructure group, the team that supplies telephone, wired and wireless network services to the university.
"Because of work we did to strengthen our wireless network last year," she said, "our data shows that less than 15 percent of students now use wired Ethernet connections to get to the network in their rooms. These ports depend on very expensive switches, so it made sense to put one live Ethernet port in each room, which allowed us to reduce the number of switches in the residences and use the excess switches elsewhere on campus."
While she pointed out that students who need a second Ethernet port activated in their rooms can contact the OIT Service Desk, Wingate guessed that most will pick up wireless connections immediately and never even unpack their Ethernet cables. Read more about these changes at Connecting to Duke via Ethernet.
Improvements to the networks for our preferred cellular vendors, AT&T and Verizon Wireless, have made it possible for us to save on expenses related to the wired phone service in residence halls, as well.
"More and more people rely on wireless phones for all their calls. In fact, we sold local wired service to just 1 percent of student rooms during the 2008-09 academic year," Wingate said, "so it didn't make sense to maintain that program. Students who plug a standard phone into the wall jacks in their rooms will be able to call 911 in case of emergency, and there is no cost for this service, but cell calls to 911 will be routed to local emergency call centers as well." Read more at 911 Emergency Calls from Student Residences.
In the past, OIT also issued long distance authorization codes, which billed students' long distance calls to their OIT accounts. With most students taking advantage of unlimited long distance on their cell phones, less than 1 percent of students requested a long distance authorization code last semester, so OIT has ended that program, too, to save on the expenses associated with creating, billing and collecting these accounts.
"The changes we've made to Duke-supplied cellular and cable TV services reflect our obligation to fully recoup the costs associated with these services," Wingate said.
Duke's wireless phone rates will go up this year, she explained, both because, with cell phones so ubiquitous, the number of students who need to buy cell service from us has fallen away to almost nothing, and because the fixed costs associated with the service, such as billing and customer support are expensive to provide.
"Maintaining services that have so few customers means we have less money to invest in newer services that more people will be interested in," she added, so this will be the last year Duke sells wireless service directly to students. "Since most of our customers now are students from outside the U.S., we're working with the Duke University International House to identify other cell service options for these students." Read more at Wireless Phones and Data Devices.
The small number of subscribers to Duke’s paid cable TV services—23 percent of student rooms—is also resulting in increased cable rates as the base across which fixed costs are spread continues to decline. EdNet, the basic service that includes educational and foreign language programming, is still free to all students, but DevilVision (DTV) and the DTV Gold and Platinum packages will cost more this year. Read more at Cable TV Service.
At the same time, Wingate said, we are working with Student Affairs and the Campus Council to develop a cost model that would allow us to deliver programming beyond EdNet to all rooms and include the costs in the basic room rate. And she points to OIT's investigation of Internet Protocol Television (IPTV, which delivers digital television programming through the network, rather than through cable) as a real possibility in the future.
"We are also working to eliminate expenses associated with billing and collections," Wingate said, "so are changing payment methods for student cell service and paid cable." Student wireless customers will pay their monthly bills through automated drafts on their DukeCard flexible spending accounts, while cable TV subscribers will pay for an entire semester in a lump sum during a subscription window at the beginning of each semester, completely eliminating the need for billing and collection during the semester.
Wingate stressed that OIT is always consulting with Residential Life and Housing Services to review its service offerings and the business models for each to ensure limited resources are maximized and in close alignment with the university’s academic mission.
"We're hopeful students will appreciate the steps we are taking to reduce administrative expenses as much as possible," Wingate said, "so that Duke can dedicate its available funds as much as possible to developing newer, better services."