Active Phone Jacks May Be Temporary

Students who were pleasantly surprised to find multiple active telephone jacks in their suites this year may want to wait before investing in extra telephones.

Any additional operable phone jacks that were not activated upon students’ requests will be turned off by the end of the month, according to the Harvard Student Telephone Office.

“Tell them, ‘Don’t count on it,’” said Nancy Kinchla, director of telecommunications services, referring to students who hope to use the additional phone jacks for the rest of the year.

In the past, only phone jacks located in common rooms were automatically turned on at the beginning of the year. Other jacks, especially those in bedrooms, were activated only at students’ requests and only for additional fees.

According to Kinchla, the temporary windfall may have been caused by students who provided incorrect jack numbers when they spoke to service vendors.

“There have been a couple of [the mistakenly activated jacks]. It is not, to my knowledge, a widespread thing,” Kinchla said. “We always run into that, and will correct it over the next month.”

Students who were surprised to find themselves with an extra working jack will probably not have to worry about additional fees. “Students won’t pay if they didn’t request it,” Kinchla said. “If they did request it, they will pay.”

Kinchla emphasized that PaeTec Communications, the University’s new service provider for local and long-distance calls, had nothing to do with the additional active jacks.

Yu Ping Chan ’04, a resident of Leverett House enjoying her extra functional jack, said she was surprised to learn that PaeTec was not involved.

“I thought the new phone carrier gave everybody free local service,” Chan said.

Richard M. Lichtenstein ’04 said his Adams House suite last year had an extra functional jack until Oct. 1.

“It was great when we had it,” he said. “And then I was sad when they took it away.”

—Staff writer Alexander J. Blenkinsopp can be reached at blenkins@fas.harvard.edu.