Free VoIP for Dartmouth Students

dtfusion writes "After upgrading their network infrastructure and doing some testing over the summer, Dartmouth is making free voice over IP available to incoming freshman. It turns out it was costing them more to bill the students for local and long distance than for the calls themselves. What will the success/failure of VoIP on this scale have on telecom?" There's an older story and a newer story from the Dartmouth public affairs office; that second one probably spurred the NYT article. The sysadmin-types are planning to study usage during the rollout.

Comments

stupid

[Boromir son of Faram]

This is a really bad idea. Most students have cellular phones these days, so having any sort of voice capabilities in dorms is a waste of resources. OTOH, students have extremely high data transfer needs. The bandwidth being wasted in VoIP would be much better utilized in data connections. Oh well, I guess the kids can just use modems over the VoIP lines.

Re:stupid

[Slurpee]

Not really. The difference between wants and needs is irrelevant.
From the prespective of the IT/IS department, they need to worry about how much bandwidth consumption there's going to be, and that's it.

Not quite right. Sure, some IT departments may take that approach, but when I worked in the IT department of the school of Computer Science and Engineering (CSE) at UNSW, we cared a *lot* about the difference between needs and wants.

We implemented a bandwidth quota for students and staff. Bandwidth would be allocated (generously) based on what courses people were doing. Research, PHDs and staff got heaps more. You got a minimum each session, plus a certain amount per subject you were doing. IE If you did Comp1011 (Intro to computing), you only needed a small amount of data. If you were doing three subjects, you got an allocation for each subject. If you were doing Networks, you got more bandwidth. The limits were set by the lecturers, and was very generous. It was very fair, and generally speaking, people didn't have a problem with their bandwidth. Students were able to buy extra bandwidth at cost price if they wanted more. It cost them less from us than any ISP.

Local bandwidth (Uni-wide) was not charged. Local (Australian) was charged what it cost us (fairly cheap..4c a meg or so) and international was charged at 9c a meg or so. This was all cost price. Aarnet was not charged at all (A local Aus mirror which holds heaps), plus we held heaps of local mirrors of all sorts of stuff. If the data was fetched from our proxy, you weren't charged.

At the end of the day, it was a complex system that worked to make sure people had enough data for Uni needs, plus a bit extra for personal. if you were big into downloading heaps of stuff...you paid for it yourself. The system had a lot of thought put in to make it as fair as possible, and to make sure that only "at cost" was charged. It wasn't fair that non-leeching students payed for leechers. We didn't want to make money out of it...just stop bleeding money ourselves.

Why not give everyone as much data as they wanted? We did up until about 2000, but the bandwidth cost was starting to kill us. In Australia we pay through our teeth for data. We didn't want to charge...but the bandwidth had to be payed for somehow.

Local and Long Distance?

[kevin_conaway]

Is this setup to connect to a POTS somewhere (to make local and long distance calls) or is it just around the campus?

"Too cheap to meter"

[strudeau]

It turns out it was costing them more to bill the students for local and long distance than for the calls themselves.

This feature of services shows up a lot -- where accounting for / metering the use of something makes up a significant (sometimes the significant) cost of a system. Mass transit is another example. Are there other, more efficient ways to pay for these "too cheap to meter" types of service? Tuition and taxes are one way.

Re: "Too cheap to meter"

[FreeLinux]

There are two reasons at play here. The first reason is that thanks to VoIP the per minute cost is somewhere around 1 cent per minute and may be less. This is due to a combination of VoIP and volume discount contracts between Dartmouth and long distance carriers.

In the case of normal carriers, their very large subscriber base can be easily used to spread out the cost of the call accounting system that they use for billing and they have no issues. However, Dartmouth's subscriber base is infinitely smaller. Also, Dartmouth is using Cisco's VoIP solution whose call manager and accounting system is less than stellar in quality and capability and more than outrageous in price.

This results in a situation where it would cost Dartmouth much more to purchase and maintain the crappy accounting system than it would to give away the 1 cent per minute calls. Now, in the case of most companies this would not stop them from charging 25 cents or more per minute to cover the cost of the accounting system. But, it seems that someone at Dartmouth realized that long distance service is already available in that area for this price or less so no one would use their service and Cisco would not "underwrite" their lab. By giving the service away, it costs Dartmouth very little but, they get a high tech lab with all of the latest Cisco toys. It results in a win for Dartmouth, a win for Dartmouth students and a win for Cisco who will go around bragging about the thousands of stations that they have deployed, just like they do about all the other VoIP systems that they have given away. Ultimately, some PHB is going to fall for their sales pitch and actually pay them for their crappy system that actaully describes "Dial Tone" as a feature.

Re:"Too cheap to meter"

[dna_(c)(tm)(r)]

If a presently pay-per-ride mass transit system were made free

Well, actually, in Belgium there is a city where public transport is free (yes, as in beer) for everybody. Or more correctly, everybody pays, regardless if they use it or not(payed for by taxes).

The actual cost might have decreased, if you calculate private cost, increased tourism revenu, ... Might make an interesting case study to (dis)prove your point

Bandwidth problem

[MigrantHail]

We use VoIP at my work, and it works pretty well. The only problem we have is that sometime the thing just doesn't respond at first. You have to wait and re-try again later.

Effect?

[turbotalon]

"What will the success/failure of VoIP on this scale have on telecom?"

Um, doesn't the telecom industry own much of the data backbone as well? When they quit making money from local service, they start making money on bandwidth.

Some sort of universal agreement will have to be made with ISP's about badwidth usage so that 1) users can use VoIP all they want without bandwidth caps, and 2) Telecom companies have margin for profit.

Perhaps per GB unmetered home access at resonable per GB rates?

Just my $.02

Re:Effect?

[JUSTONEMORELATTE]

When they quit making money from local service, they start making money on bandwidth.
But that's losing a market with high margins and a high barrier to entry for competitors, while gaining a market with low margins and many competitors already in place.
It will be a shift of revenue, but it's far from a zero-sum game.

--

VOIP question

[zymano]

I remember there used to be alot of free internet phone VOIP services on the internet but they have all died out and are now charging money. But my question is how do you get your internet call over regular phone lines ? How is it done ?

Power Outage

[rf0]

But will it work if there is a power outage and you have to call 911?

Rus

Re:Power Outage

[narftrek]

I can't figure out if this is a troll or a legitimate question. Every time someone posts a story about VOIP phones someone just has to point this out. The same answer applies each time. NO. You have to run a UPS. Why is that hard to comprehend? VOIP is not a replacement for standard telephony-it's an alternative. A better one in my book. If it ran just like the phone service how would it be better? It's like the Linux\Windows debates. Linux doesn't have to be just like Windows to be successful on the desktop-it just has to work. VOIP works. Not exactly like the Bells but good enough.

Maybe some slashdotter out there should start another stupid beowulf cluster/soviet russia/I for one jokes with this damned tired VOIP question. IE:

HEADLINE: AMD launches new Athlon 64 CPU.

"/.er": Yeah but will it work during a power outage and you need to dial 911?

See how that works? Just as retarded as those other worn out jokes.

Oh and BTW I for one welcome our new VOIP overlords.

slightly offtopic

[the idoru]

how do you all pronounce VoIP?

cause i say it as one word, kind of like poi (the food) but with a P at the end and a V instead of a P at the front. am i insane for doing this?

course i pronounce gnu as "new" but that's just my own heresy.

The billing cost more than the calls.

[Anonymous Coward]

Boy, I wish they would put that up in big bold letters right on the front page of the New York Times. When I've suggested this in the past, people have called me all kinds of nasty things.
This is a very interesting point because seems to put the lie to the myth that markets of for-profit enterprises are always efficient and state run enterprises are always inefficient. It's beauracracy that's inefficient. And as this story shows, profit and income itself can actually create inefficient beauracracy. Whether an instituion is privatized and for profit or government operated is not the important point.
A privatized telephone network that is charging most of its fees just to support its billing infrastructure is in no way more efficient than a state run telecom that gives away telecoms service.
Maybe that's why I get my 1.5meg DSL for twenty bucks a month with free local phone service here in Taiwan where our biggest ISP is the government.
Just remember kids, regime change begins at home.

user interface

[line.at.infinity]

From the NYT article:

When running, the software appears on the screen as a phone with a dial pad. Phone numbers are dialed by clicking the numbers on the key pad.

I doubt many people would be so afraid of keyboards that they'd rather use a mouse! I'm guessing that there'd also be a feature where you type or click on a nickname from your personal address book to make a call. I can see softphone in the future working with fake urls, sort of like those aim:// urls that Aim has.

Dartmouth Phone System

[querencia]

Here may be the reason why they're doing it:

When I was at Dartmouth (Class of '94), everybody on campus knew that if you did the following:

1. Dial 1 and the area code
2. Click the receiver once
3. Dial the rest of the number

you got free long distance calls. I had a roommate with a girlfriend in Spain, and he figured out how to do it for long distance.

If that still works, I bet nobody at Dartmouth will be using VoIP.

Damn US-centric slashcode

[jrumney]

Why does slashcode filter out pound and euro signs, but leave the far more dangerous environment variable tag intact?

Continuing the BASIC tradition

[Ungrounded Lightning]

But why Dartmouth?

Because Dartmouth students talk a lot.

But seriously...

Dartmouth has quite a tradition of making hi-tek utilities free to their students. In particular:

Back in the bad old days of computing "a computer" was a room full of million-buck grey boxes attended by white-coated priests with PhDs. Any user who was not a member of the priesthood (and some who were) was billed by the second for its use and had to hand in his job at the window as a deck of punched cards, coming back hours later for the printed and maybe punched results.

An invention was made in these days: "Time Sharing". (A computer running a multitasking OS that in turn runs multiple copies of a command language processor, each copy serving a separate, directly-connected user. Think "dialup shell account".)

At first it was limited to fancy directly-connected terminals. Then a relatively cheap multple-teletype interface was invented to use the relatively-cheap TWX machines as terminals. Mechanical Teletype (r) machines, typically running 110 baud 8-bit ASCII. And a few, expensive, "Dataphone" modems could be used to allow remote teletypes to dial in over the TWX network.

But CPU time was still billed by the second, as was connect time on the expensive dialup lines or the less expensive directly-connected terminals.

But then the regents of Dartmouth U got a bee in their bonnet: They were a University. A University was SUPPOSED to be in business to teach students. So this resouce should be available to The Students.

Not just students taking a computer class. Not just grad students on a special, sponsored, project. ALL the students. ALL the time. NO bills.

So Dartmouth put in a bunch of Teletypes, all over campus. And wired them to the Computing Center. And gave EVERY student an account. Even entering freshmen. All of 'em. CPU time, disk storage, the whole shebang.

And because they couldn't afford the manpower to babysit the entire student body they invented a very easy-to-teach interpreted computer language, with a built-in, simple, text-file editor. And wrote manuals and lessons that could be read (and run) on-line.

You've probably heard of it.

It was called BASIC.

A fellow named Gates got his start in the industry by porting it to the Altair - the first home computer.

So it doesn't surprise me AT ALL, now that voice telephony is becoming a "marginal good" (i.e. "too cheap to meter", like electirc elevators without ticket-takers or coin slots) that Dartmouth should be the first institution to make it available to their people without an extra fee.