<p>My daughter and her roommate each have cell phones. Our wireless company claims "good" ( not "excellent") coverage for the general vicinity. However, the college is in Western MA where there are mountains (or at least, very big hills) and we won't know what cell phone coverage is like until she gets out there and tries using her phone on campus.</p>
<p>The college provides each student with an on-campus/4-digit extension. You can call any campus extension (other dorms, faculty and admin offices) via this free service but cannot make any off-campus calls. For $21 a month, you can get local service with a plan that is similar to that offered by wireless companies -- i.e., no unlimited local calls but rather a certain number of minutes each month.</p>
<p>We aren't sure whether our daughter should subscibe to the local phone service. She will be able to reach anyone on campus and vice-versa but again, wireless service might be iffy. Any thoughts?</p>
<p>Why decide now? My school makes me pay for a land line which I have not plugged into for 3 years.....and most folks I know don't plug in either. I would either inquire on the school discussion boards or wait until you arrive and evaluate the service. Everyone I know at boarding schoool and college campus use cell service exclusively. In the event that the cell service is down I usually have a calling card number for emergency service....
Good luck with the big trip.</p>
<p>Can outside persons, like you, call into that free phone service? If so, you may want to see how things work with just the free service if she already has wireless. If the wireless is not clear but can still connect to your home phone, a simple process, and one we follow, is that she calls on the wireless and then you hang up and you call her back on the regular line.In any event, even if you cannot call into that free line,I agree with the above that you probably want to wait and see how the wireless works once she is there.</p>
<p>A slightly more inconvenient, but still decent and completely free, option is to use Skype. My mother and I use it to talk when I'm at school. It's a voip program that really works as well as a phone. The only downside is that you have to be at your computer to talk, but we've got wireless internet at school and my mom's gotten a router at the house, so the computer can be moved anywhere and, as long as Skype is on, we can talk to each other. Through Skype, there is also a way (for a charge) for someone to use their computer to call a land line/cell phone and a way to get a phone number assigned to your computer so that people can call your computer from a land line/cell phone. <a href="http://www.skype.com%5B/url%5D">www.skype.com</a></p>
<p>Good advice so far. My instinct tells me you won't need that land line and should take that $21 to add minutes to the cellphone plan. You will save costs both ways if your own localphone is same directory as your daughter's and/or if your own cellphone is same cell company.</p>
<p>For example, when we call my daughter's cellphone, which is keyed to our home address, it's a local call from our land line. But actually because her cellphone is same company as ours, when we call her (or she calls us) this is essentially a free call.</p>
<p>My D's land line phone came "free" with the room. It turned out to be useful on a number of occasions when D's cell phone was turned off or lost. Plus even if D wasn't in, her roommate sometimes was and could take a message.</p>
<p>Overall, I found the land line to be a useful back-up.</p>
<p>We've just rented a vacation place in VT, where, we're told, cell phone reception is poor. I think the same might apply to Western MA. A backup would be a good idea, but it might be best to wait and see if the reception is truly poor.</p>
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<p>Overall, I found the land line to be a useful back-up.<<</p>
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<p>I have to agree (same D). We only used the free land line when she hadn't called us for a while and we couldn't get ahold of her on her cell phone (she had lost her phone but didn't want to tell us until she had cleaned her room, on the off chance she could find her phone). Our calls to her were free to her, but she couldn't call out to an off-campus number. I'm guessing that you could make long distance calls by using 1-800 with a calling card, but don't know for sure. But I wouldn't pay $21 for local service. The amount of time kids are in their dorm room. . .She said that nobody signs up for the pay land line.</p>
<p>During the summer before freshman year, D emailed a current student and asked what carriers had the best reception. Got the answer that Verizon was hands down the best. You might want to ask a current student.</p>
<p>Most of her friends at college seemed to just bring their cell phones from home to college. The area codes on her cell phone bill are from all over the country!</p>
<p>My D's land line also came free with the room and she has free long distance but it does not increase the amount of time she calls. I agree with the above posters that if you can call into her room phone for free it is a good back up when D can't find or doesn't charge phone (I am also relieved to know that my child is the only person who loses her phone). </p>
<p>However if she has decent reception (D has Verizon and no complaints) and and your plan includes free long distance and no roaming charges, then she really won't be using her room phone. Often the conversations from the room phone consists of ordering food and met me at type calls so I don't think she will be killing her minutes</p>
<p>DS does not have a land line and neither do any of his friends (he is in a major city, however). If I REALLY need to get in touch with him, I send him an email, and he calls. We thought about the landline for leaving messages, but the reality is that he checks his computer often enough and messages can be left there...no need for a land line phone to do that. Also, his we sometimes leave voicemail messages on the cell...but honestly, we have better success with the email.</p>
<p>You don't need hilly MA to have bad cell phone service. I live in the flat midwest and have poor service. We seldom get more than one bar at our house. But I agree with the others. After she arrives at college, your daughter can figure out whether her cell phone will suffice or a land line will be needed.</p>
<p>You can call people via the internet...there are some free online calling sites that are quite good. skype is one of them. The inconvenience is that you have to both be on the computer, but it's free!</p>
<p>We've never used our daughter's college supplied land line, nor has she. Cells seem to work fine throughout the Berkshires (although there are dead spots, as everywhere.) Cell phones need to be tri-mode, though, for best performance, just in case you get into an area without digital service. In that case, the analog mode will kick in.</p>
<p>Thank you for the suggestions. Without subscribing to the college-provided local phone service (= 500 minutes of local calls/month), calls can only be made among campus extensions. We cannot call in nor can she call out. I'm all for trying Skype (or other similar programs) but my husband (who makes his living as a computer networking consultant) seems cool to the idea. Go figure....</p>