Internet Charge, More Than Reasonable

This is in response to Miss Hilda Tam’s letter to the DFP on Thursday March 27th, 2003 entitled “Internet Charge Outrageous”. First of all, let me state that $100 for roughly 9 months’ worth of Ethernet service is more than reasonable, it’s incredibly cheap. And I would like to know where Miss Tam, on God’s green earth, would be able to get cheaper Ethernet service of the same quality as the one BU provides? When I go home for the summer I am stuck with a 56k dial-up that costs me $12.95/month, which is more expensive than the 200-times-faster connection that BU provides us. I would love to get a connection as fast at home as the one we have here at BU; However, the closest thing I could get is ADSL which charges $60/month (not including the modem) for less than one-third the speed that the school gives us. To claim that BU is charging us the full amount for our Ethernet connection is simply ludicrous! The big change — which you have not noticed because you were not here and did not bother to look up — was that BU installed Ethernet into all the dormitories, including the newly-acquired Howard Johnson’s dormitories. They did this in roughly 5 years, and if you can provide BU residents now with cheaper Ethernet service than BU has (and I will even waive the fixed costs of installing all the wiring in all the dorms) than by all means sign me up. As for the inability to use the computer labs on campus without paying for them, I agree that it is unfortunate that the school has implemented the system as such, but I believe that there was no cost-effective way of getting around that. However, you could still use the computer labs in CAS 330 and the one in the Geddes Language Center, to name a few, these labs have never required BU logins.

The fact that you believe that BU will hoard this supposed new wealth of $1,100,000 is simply shocking (as I gaze down to the bottom of your letter and find out you are a student of management). I would hate to work for any company that you managed seeing that you believe that products and services are free and fall out of the sky. Not only does it cost BU to install those lines throughout campus but they must also pay for the bandwidth that comes with them. Also we do pay a fee to flush “the damn toilets”; it’s called our water bill. Just because you don’t see it in your housing statement does not mean it doesn’t exist. Every time you flush the toilet you waste more water, and that is taken into account in our housing costs, which go up every year because people leave lights on when they are not home or the heat on with the windows open, etc. You don’t think of it because it is not all nicely itemized for you, so you believe instead, that water is magic. Lastly, I wish to state that I am not indifferent to the concerns of students who might struggle with the added expense for the Ethernet service. I understand full well how difficult it can be to finance a college education especially at this school, but what I do not like is when students are outraged for not knowing the facts, or worse, believing they know them and that “Big Bad” BU is coming just to get our money without seeing it from their point of view. I will tell you Miss Tam, Ethernet is a privilege, not a right.

Hakan Rudy Seber hrseber@bu.edu 617-356-5360 CAS ’04