Cellular epidemic infects campus life

A cashier at the Cava Java café has of late noticed quite a few customers chatting on their cellular phones while sipping lattés. He thinks nothing of it. But every so often, someone in line takes a call right when it's their turn to order and holds everyone up.

"That," he said, "is really annoying."

While out playing golf, one student became red-faced when a melodic beeping rang out from his pocket, just as his friend started his swing. The friend was not amused.

SARA SCHENCK/Daily Third-year Law student stops on a curb to make a call on her cellular phone Sunday. The use of cellular phones on campus has increased in recent years.

A genetics professor, interrupted in mid-sentence by a student's incoming call, sarcastically asked the student, "Would you like to get that?"

Mobile phone users are everywhere. And they are changing the face of campus life.

From the lawns of the Diag to sidewalk coffee shops, they are easy to spot, clutching their palm-sized devices, seeming deeply absorbed in conversations about where they are and what they ate for lunch.

Driven by a steady decline in service costs and a booming economy that is leaving many Americans with record disposable income, a growing number of college students here and on campuses across the nation are going wireless.

Students say their phones are indispensable to them. Lured by attractive pricing schemes, most say they bought them to become more accessible and consolidate their channels of communication to one number. Many felt they would be safer in an emergency.

"Now I can be reached 24 hours a day," said Francois Prouhet, an Art and Design sophomore who said he is always on the move.

He has had his phone for eight months.

LSA senior Casey Costello admitted his phone was "a fun toy."

But he said, in all seriousness, that it had in many ways simplified his life.

Most mobile phone users soon discover that what begins as necessity often slips into frivolity. The phones, they say, have become an integral part of their lifestyles, with uses ranging from calls for roadside assistance to deep dish pizza orders.

Although the students have survived for many years without mobile phones, today they cannot fathom life without one.

"You don't miss it until you've had it," said LSA senior Steven Wang. "But once you start using it, you can't do without it."

Marketing experts say the phone companies are wise to focus on embedding the new devices in the everyday lives of users. College students, whose independent lives are just beginning, are an obvious target of the marketing campaigns.

"The key is to get students to try it out, find that it fits into their lives, and have it become indispensable," said Business Prof. Rajeev Batra.

He said recent promotions from some of the nation's largest service providers seek to do just that. For example, Sprint offers a $50 monthly fee, with 500 free minutes. The flat fee plan does not penalize users for each additional minute they use.

"If people think the clock is ticking, they are discouraged from talking," Batra said. "To get people to use the phones all the time, you have to take away the ticking."

Prouhet pointed out that the rate he pays - ten cents per minute for anywhere in the country - was comparable to long-distance rates on most home phone lines. Most students said they use their mobile phones, not their land lines, to call home.

The growth in mobile phone usage among students at the University is reflected in the dramatic rise in phone thefts reported to the Department of Public Safety each year. In 1990, one phone was reported stolen. In 1998, that number had risen to 71.

The rise at the University mirrors national trends. It is estimated that there are over 69 million mobile phone subscribers in the United States today, up from near 100,000 in the mid-1980s, according to figures from the Cellular Telecommunications Trade Association.

Jeff Nelson, the association's director of communications, said the industry's growth correlated with a steady drop in prices. He said sales of new media technology tend to take off when prices drop below 2 percent of average income. At $40 per month, the cost of mobile phone service only recently approached that level.

Students with mobile phones said they expected the country to continue the move toward wireless.

"I could see everyone having one in several years," Costello said.

His friend, LSA senior Jennifer McGivern, cringed at the thought.

"It just seems excessive," she said.

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