New Jersey students get free cellphones to hook up to campus net
posted September 30th 2005 11:20AM
Forget that cheap cellphone with its
lousy data plan that your parents tried to foist on you before you left for college. If your school is anything like
Montclair State University in New Jersey, you may be able to get the school to hand you a free Moto i860, packed with
software to connect to the campus network. Montclair State is handing the phones to incoming freshmen as part of an
experiment in campus-wide social networking. Students with the phones can subscribe to school-created mobile channels,
create their own channels and subscribe to text and multimedia alerts about school events (and we're sure there's
already a MoSoSo app for quick
hookups). The service was created by New York-based Rave Wireless, and Sextel beefed up its network around the school,
to make sure that students don't lose the signal as they move around the campus. Is there a catch? Sure. The phone and
data service are free, but you only get a token voice plan. If you want to use the phone to actually make calls, you'll
need to spring for an expanded plan.
[Via textually.org]
In other news, college costs have tripled due to excessive needless spending.
Next, the school finds out they forgot to disable text messaging and they get a bill for $100,000...
next thing you know they will be giving students IPODs oh wait never mind.
I wish I had that at my school...
The negativity on this blog is sometimes just plain .....bleh.
"Montclair State is handing the phones to incoming freshmen as part of an experiment in campus-wide social networking."
Whatever happened to ordering a few kegs?
Does anyone want to split a pie? I'm gonna order a pie what do you want on your half?
#6
freshman.age < 21
I like the idea, mostly because my school has little to no real pride/social scene. I think being able to easily communicate with your classmates could very useful, especially if there is a way to see who is in your class. Homework help, misssed notes, etc, or even "party, my place, now" texts.
#8
(freshman.age < 21) ≠ freshman don't drink
#1,
I work at MSU - The phones and the plans are actually paid for by a phone services fee that appears on the students bill for each semester. That money used to go into the unreliable land-line service we used to provide. If a student already has a phone plan, Rave Wireless offers to buy out the plan for them. Everybody wins.
I'm currently a sophmore at montclair, and yes its true. all the freshman get free nextel phones. i think they suckered them into it tho, because they apparantly didnt charge for the fall semester. they just bill you for spring.
and when they gave them out they hired a dj and were like "hey free phones, wooo hooo!!!!". the nextel ring is getting on my nerves personally. everyone is using the push to talk feature. all at once. you can imagine it i think.
also i think its worth a mention, that upper class men can get the phones too, with the rave wireless features, but they have to pay for the fall semester i belive.
the features i think are like, school email access, online course services, free news traffic and weather reports, and they say that they have gps tracking for our campus shuttles, but ive heard that it doesnt work.
so yeah. a little insight from a montclairian.
I'm sure most students have already got a much nicer looking phone than the i860.
I work at MSU also; It's worth noting that Nextel is paying rent to us to have towers on our buildings ;-)
Calls between students on the program, I believe are free, of free while on campus, or some similar such deal. It's actually a great bargain for them, and now they no longer have to deal with the AT&T ACUS landline service. All in all, I think we're going in the right direction.
Now we just need to get some tri-bands phones ...
Some clarity! As a grad student geek at Montclair I've looked into this in detail. The mobile phone and the Rave service are two different products. The mobile phone is only meant to replace the residence hall phones that students don't use anymore. So, only on-campus students received them and most students pay for a PBX-based phone anyway at typical US universities - that fee the school told us will go away. The Rave service runs on that phone but the school said it will eventually offer it on other models when the program exapnds to upperclass students. The Rave service provides students access to local channels like the location of the shuttle buses on campus (on interactive maps on the mobile phone), real-time local traffic, daily local event and food/drink specials, an RSS reader, and I heard they'll adding gps-based safety and the ability to share your location with friends on a map when you are out and want to re-meetup. As a young woman the safety channel seems killer enough but in general I can see using this a few times a day to plan and manage my day.
and to think I used to live 10 minutes from that school. free phones wow!
Revo