Dartmouth College, longtime forerunner in technological advances, is now offering this year’s incoming freshman class the opportunity to participate in “voice over Internet protocol,” which converts a computer into a telephone.

In the 1980’s, Dartmouth was the first college to run a computer network to every residence hall on its campus. In 1984, the school implemented a campus-wide e-mail program long before e-mail was common anywhere else. In 2001, the entire campus became one of the first complete campus-wide wireless networks in the country.

The more than 1,000 students of the Class of 2007 can download software, called Softphone, onto Windows-based computers.

Softphone enables the user to make local or long distance telephone calls for free when a headset is connected to the computer’s USB port. The call appears on the computer screen as a telephone keypad, on which the students use their mouse to dial.

David Kotz, a computer science professor at Dartmouth, is planning to conduct an extensive study of the Voice over Internet Protocol at Dartmouth, which he said will examine several components of technology.

“We are installing several mechanisms to track the number and type of calls, the location of the callers, and call details like duration, bandwidth and quality,” Kotz said.

Kotz pointed out Dartmouth’s extensive e-mail culture, which he considers a unique feature of campus life.

“People tend not to use the phone … in part because students are rarely in their dorm room with the phone, in part because cell phones are rare and coverage is spotty, and mostly because we have an e-mail culture,” Kotz said.

However, students at other universities use both cell phones and the Internet.

Mark Albanese, University of Wisconsin professor of population health sciences, is skeptical about the use of this technology at UW.

Albanese said the success of this type of technology at any given campus would depend on the habits of the students on that campus

“I think the bigger issue is whether students will want to be tethered to their computers for making calls when cell phones provide the freedom to roam.”

UW is unlikely to make the technology available campus-wide anytime soon for two reasons, said Brian Rust, senior administrative program specialist at Division of Information Technology.

The UW is an extension of the UW System, and thus uses the state’s phone system, which is contracted to Centrex. Secondly, the switchover to voice over Internet protocol involves an equipment investment, the cost of which would likely have to be included in student fees.

Rust added that DoIT is currently in the process of upgrading the UW network to make it faster and have a greater technological capacity.

The use of Softphone technology is attractive to some colleges because since users do not have to go through a telephone company to make the calls, the calls are essentially free. If Softphone were to become widely popular, traditional telephone companies would see significantly decreased revenue.

“Given how aggressively the music industry is addressing the problems they are having with students downloading music from the web, I suspect the communications industry will come up with innovative ways to make Softphone less free,” remarked Albanese.