University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point is one of the last UW System schools to remove landline telephones from residence halls, saving students more than $400,000 every year.

“A number of years ago, telephone usage started dropping off,” Assistant Director for Residential Living Susan Malnory said. “We could kind of see it coming, but just now decided to take them out.”

During the last school year, there were 3,000 student landlines, of which only 29 had ever been used, added Malnory.

The housing division at UW took out landlines in all residence halls in fall 2008, saving $400,000, and housing has not received any known complaints, according to UW Housing Director Paul Evans.

Evans said the UW first started looking into removing landlines because of very low usage numbers, as more and more students turn to their cell phones.

“We did a survey of all our residents before we made the final decision and so few students ever used theirs or knew what their number was, it just made sense to remove them since they were costing students money,” Evans said.

Housing at UW-Stevens Point as well as UW still provide phones in every common room or on each floor, as well as provide phone service through the student’s expense, which only 10 students elected to do at UW in 2008.

At UW-Stevens Point, they charge students $23.50 if they choose to have a phone installed.

One of the first UW System schools to remove the phones was University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire, which began three years ago after a request was made by the student advisory board to remove them, and this saves students $500,000 every year, according to Chuck Major, director of housing at UW-Eau Claire.

He added around 96 percent of students had been solely using cell phones and the change was inevitable.

“More and more schools are moving in that direction, and I can’t think of any reason why they would want to maintain it, (providing landlines) if in fact students aren’t using them,” Major said.