<p>For those of you with students out of state or going out of state are you (or have you) staying with your local exchange or are you setting up new phones with the Colleges area code? </p>
<p>I have read some of the other cell phone threads and am perplexed by how to limit DS use and yet still have a contact. Based upon my mood today the dorm landline seems fine, but I recognize the universal nature of the cell phone use in the modern students life. My options are to either leave him on the family plan with an out of state area code, pay a small fee per month and hope he keeps minutes down or get him his own line in the colleges area code, let him pay his own monthly fee and be responsible for his own minutes. I like the latter but it will cost at least $50 more per month.</p>
<p>Any suggestions or related experiences appreciated.</p>
<p>my daughter attends school in same general calling area ( next state) so no problem and any calls she makes to us of course are within the family plan
my niece who attends across the country has a different area code- but since it is also on family plan it is free whenever she calls her family</p>
<p>My daughter attends a college several states away from us. We have the verizon family plan with three phones and will probably soon add a fourth. She has very poor reception at her school, not just verizon, there are just not many towers near her so she has to walk to a certain area on campus or call when she’s driving off campus. Since it’s a national plan it doesn’t matter about the area code. We have no roaming charges. All of her friends (ahhh, except one!) have cell phones and that’s how they reach each other, they don’t even call the landline phones. Since the kids don’t really hang out in their rooms a lot, the phone time is often not when they are in their rooms. I pay about $86 a month and we’ve never gone over our minutes. OH! Because of her poor cell coverage on campus, she does also use phone cards that we get periodically at BJ’s. I would not want her to be without a cell phone when she rides/drives the 16 hours to and from college 4-6 times a year.</p>
<p>My D’s college is several hundreds of miles from home and she uses our local area code for her cell phone (shares a Verizon plan with me)–virtually all her friends seem to do the same and to use their cell phones almost exclusvely. Since all have national plans it doesn’t make a difference what the area code is; all minutes count the same whether to Massachusetts or Virginia, and so on…Cell phone service is good at my D’s school, and this seems to be the most economical way to handle it for our family. Most of the calls are either within the Verizon system or after 9 p.m. We have 800 shared minutes a month and I don’t use my cell phone much; we have not come close to going over (thanks in large part to the unlimited night and weekend system, and made even easier by the new IN-calling). Also note that text messaging is increasingly used, so that should be part of the calculations too.</p>
<p>I use a cell that is based in New England, but my national plan doesn’t have roaming charges.</p>
<p>If your S’s phone will work at school without roaming, then send it with him. Figure out how many minutes you can allocate to him every month for non-family calling, and tell him what that is. Make him responsible for any over-minute charges that result from his going over his minutes. (For example, if he gets 300 minutes per month, uses 400, and you are charged for 75 excess minutes, he pays for the 75 minutes. If he uses 350 and the family spends a lot of time on the phone so there are 75 excess minutes, he only pays for 50.)</p>
<p>Good thing is that you can call from a landline after 9 pm and not incur any charges. My family (and New England friends) like that I’m a local call.</p>
<p>Although I’m a student, I’m a dinosaur. I’ve always paid every cent of my cell by myself and see them as luxuries, not necessities - back in 2001, we all got along fine without cells on campus. Landlines are usually fine - sure, a cell is more convenient, but more convenience rarely equates to necessity.</p>
<p>My daughter also attends school a few hundred miles away and has verizon. when she calls home on her cell phone it is a local call. In addition her school gives them free long distance from their room. Since most companies now have nationwide calling plans that give free nights and weekends as well as free long distance. As long as your plan does not charge for roaming when S is at school everything should be ok. If you are part of a family plan, S can call you cell phone (essentially free and he will not be burning any minutes)</p>
<p>another option you might consider is a computer-based line, such as offered by local cable companies and by Vonage. (Room must have high-speed INternet access to make this work.)</p>
<p>For about $25/month you get unlimited US and Canada calling. The catch here of course is you don’t have a cell phone. </p>
<p>In our case, my son goes to school in Canada. His vonage/computer line is the same as our local area code and we pay about $5 more a month for a Canadian “alias” that allows people who call him in Canada to access him through a Montreal phone line. </p>
<p>Having said all this, I think a cell phone is useful.</p>
<p>Here’s a stupid question:
Do kids that have these “national call plans” know each other’s area codes so that when they call each other on campus they get through? (Does that make sense?)</p>
<p>Cell phone, speed dial, in the same network…it matters not what an area code is really. One can quickly learn while on campus what friends are in the same network which means the calls are not using minute fee…but are included in your network package…for other friends you can pretty easily call after hours for extended conversations or use your allocated fee minutes. Text messaging is also useful. I find that I use no minutes to keep in contact w/ family because it is a network deal and for friends…well it is not a problem. As for the knowing a number? Most folks I know when meeting…call the other persons phone and number is then in memory…no paper, pencil or mental image required. Don’t forget about text messaging which is also most popular. I understand that differing providers cost these differently but I use that quite a lot…if you pay individually it doesn’t make sense to me…get it included.</p>
<p>weenie,
Hazmat’s got it right. You just put the number in the memory. Actually, around here I have to dial the area code to call my neighbor, so I always think of phone numbers as being 10 digits long.</p>
<p>something I should mention while I think of it
is that every family should have an out of state contact that they can reach in case there is an emergency in their area and they can’t get through because the phone lines are clogged.
For instance we should have my brother in Indiana- if we have an earthquake in Seattle- to leave messages with so we can at least know if each other is alright.
havent had to try it yet- but this has been recommended to me</p>
<p>This is a nice idea and it also works for travel problems. I use an elderly neighbor who is usually home and take the info or at least tell my folks that I am OK. She loves feeling valued and she is also a great source for current news or warnings as she can keep up with that stuff…what a doll.</p>
<p>D is not sure whether she’ll be switching telephone numbers or not. She just got the cell phone (I know, she was deprived!) and will have a month to make the final decision. There are no roaming charges.</p>
<p>Our D went with a cell phone with area code from her college.</p>
<p>Why? Because local pizza and chinese delivery places need to call when the delivery is at the dorm and they won’t call long-distance. She’s there 9 months out of the year.</p>
<p>D has school-provided land line in her dorm room for local calls and dorm front door calls. She has stayed with our Verizon family plan and existing number she’s had for two years (area code here is 2000 miles from her college). All her college friends do the same. As stated before, with free long distance, no roaming charges, unlimited free off-peak hours and Verizon-to-Verizon calls, we have never gone over our 500 shared minutes per month for peak hour calls. Grad student S hasn’t had a land line in 6 years and has his own Verizon account, never going over his 450 peak minutes.</p>
<p>I guess at boarding school that wasn’t an issue because the bicycle delivery guys always had the kids on first floor to get the kids who were expecting delivery…not that I would ever mention underclassmen!! As for dorm delivery…where I am in school that is not a problem but I can see that it would perhaps be the case at many schools.</p>
<p>Our son took a cell phone with an area code local to the college. We did this for one reason only…if the staff of the college wanted to call him, we didn’t think a toll call was what they should have to do. We live in New England and his is an East Coast plan (down to Virginia, out to PA, north too) so he does not have roaming charges. Re: area codes and college students…they don’t ever dial their phones…they have EVERYONE’s numbers in their phone directory on the phone and they simply scroll down and hit dial (includes the area code if needed). We’ve discussed a family plan and we may go with that when DS’s contract is up this month…IF he can keep his area code and number and WE can keep ours!!</p>
<p>I would think a lot of providers have the same idea…call within network and the minutes are “free” if you can ever apply that word to cell phones… HA HA</p>