Cell phones seem to be a constant issue for many University students, whether it involves pacing around their rooms trying to get reception or walking down Rugby Road looking for the phone they misplaced the night before.
Because Charlottesville is in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains, wireless reception in the area can be of very poor quality for many cellular subscribers. Within first-year housing, McCormick Road residents seem to have more problems than Alderman Road residents, but service is often spotty in both locations.
First-year College student Tim Robinson complained about his Cingular service.
"I don't get any reception in dorms," Robinson said.
Robinson added that when he wants to call someone from his room in the Lefevre dormitory, he has to go outside for reception, often sitting in the cold and rainy weather.
Fourth-year College student Leigh Ellen Lybrand noted similar problems with her Cingular service.
Along with many other SunCom users, Lybrand was transferred to the Cingular service when Cingular purchased SunCom of Virginia in 2004.
"There are just spots where I know I used to get service with SunCom where my calls now get dropped," Lybrand said.
The SunCom changeover has added difficulties for University students who shared a SunCom plan with their families outside Virginia.
"Since Cingular only bought SunCom in Virginia, the rest of my family in South Carolina still had SunCom," Lybrand said. "Everyone in my family had to shift their plan because it wasn't economical for me to be the only one using the Cingular service."
Cingular spokesperson Alexa Kaufman said, despite some setbacks, the changeover has enhanced service in the area.
In Virginia, neither Cingular nor AT&T offered service to customers until Cingular acquired SunCom, Kaufman said, adding that Cingular has tried to accommodate former SunCom users.
"Overall, the customer satisfaction has improved with the new Cingular service," Kaufman said.
Students using Sprint/Nextel have also noticed reception problems. Third-year Engineering student Sara McLinden has had to pick her battles with her cell phone service. Because she is from Chicago, McLinden had to choose a service that would function both at school and at home.
"I have Sprint and chose it because, on average, it has the best coverage," McLinden said. "It doesn't work great here, and it can be really frustrating to lose a call ... A lot of the time the call just won't go through because 'circuits are busy' or it is 'searching for service' when it had full service a few minutes before."
On the contrary, third-year Commerce student Laura Caputo said Sprint has worked well for her.
She noted several areas of poor reception, but added, "Everywhere else, I get consistent service."
In addition to providing poor reception, some cellular companies, such as Verizon Wireless, have not established digital networks in the area. Residents with this phone service are either using the extended network or roaming while in the region.
Verizon employee Eddie Claytor said the extended network is preferred because in this case, Verizon has made a deal with other providers allowing customers to use their networks at no additional charge. When the service is roaming, Claytor added, an additional per-minute rate is charged, escalating phone bills.
This lack of coverage not only limits services but also creates further inconvenience for Charlottesville residents using the popular Verizon services. According to Claytor, because Verizon has not established a network in Albemarle County, there is no Verizon retailer in Charlottesville. While the Verizon extended network seems to be more reliable than some of the other cellular services, according to students, those with this provider face a daunting task should they need to visit a Verizon store, as the closest locations are in Harrisonburg and Richmond, 33- and 56-mile trips from Charlottesville, respectively.
For first years and other students without cars, this distance makes it very difficult to reach a Verizon store should they encounter a problem with their phone or wireless service.
The unreliability of cellular reception could potentially create problems for students who use their cell phones as their primary phone. Many of these students chose not to set up land lines in their off-Grounds residences. Although all rooms in on-Grounds housing come equipped with digital land lines, many first years admit they rarely, if ever, use these phones.
Robinson said he uses his dorm phone "sometimes but not that often -- it's just kind of easier to use cell phones."
Additionally, in order to make long-distance calls, students living in residence halls must register a PIN number with ITC so they can be billed for these services. Robinson said he was unaware of this procedure but uses his cell phone rather than his dorm phone to make long-distance calls.
Student Council President Jequeatta Upton is currently working with the administration to institute a new policy that would replace the dorm-room land lines with cell phones.
According to Student Life Committee Chair Jeff McLaughlin, "Schools such as Yale University have already implemented plans under which students are issued cell phones, eliminating the need to maintain expensive land line systems."
McLaughlin said Student Council hopes to create a similar system at the University because, presumably, so few students actually use land lines.
"Such a program would benefit the University, which may be losing money on the land line system, and would probably benefit students more than the current system does," McLaughlin said.
Despite these benefits, instituting these mass cell phone plans raises issues of safety and practicality.
"I don't think it'd be terribly useful, seeing as how [cell phones] don't work in dorms anyway," Robinson said in response to the proposed phone plan.
While cell phones apparently bring about their own set of problems, they seem to be replacing land lines as the dominant form of communication in the University community.
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