My "Student Computer Usage Fee" pays for dialup, doesn't it? I want to know why you call this a "free" dialup service

December 10, 1999

It would be interesting to find out who first started this rumor, but it is completely untrue.  S.C.U.F. (Student Computer Usage Fees) have never contributed any funds to the dialup modem pool.  We would like to provide more dialup facilities, but funding is always an issue.  It's been so much of an issue that Missouri State University actually considered dropping all dialup services in the past.

Abandon dialup?  The students voted NO in Fall, 1996.

During the Fall of 1996, the University investigated abandoning all dialup services to the Internet and letting commercial providers pick up the load.  No student fees of any kind paid for the previous four generations of dialup, and no student fees were planned to cover any of the rising costs.  The costs were ever-rising, as was the demand, and there was no end in sight for expanding this service without a specific funding source.

As many people know, $5.00 per semester per student goes into the student-controlled Wyrick Fund.  Then, according to the Wyrick Commission's policies, a student will create a proposal that is  sponsored by a staff or faculty member.  The commission accepts completed proposals that meet the guidelines and presents them to the student body for a vote.  The process starts in fall and the funds are awarded in spring

Most University employees and students supported the continued free dialup service which ultimately led to the student body showing their support by voting to spend $71,820 to purchase three communications servers supporting 138 modems which were named after the student sponsor, Sara Marie Clark.  These servers were paid for out of Wyrick Funds in June 1997.

The one-time purchase of equipment from Wyrick funding is the only money that has ever been spent from any student fees to support our dialup services.  It purchased three of the nine servers in use, and did not pay for on-going maintenance or the more expensive line charges required to operate the equipment.  Unfortunately, this one-time allocation from Wyrick has been "used up" and does not continue to adequately serve all of our users today.

If our student fees don't pay for the modems, who does?

When dialup was first introduced at Missouri State University, we had no data networks and the modems were tied directly to the IBM mainframe computer.  Later we removed the modems from the mainframe and hooked them to AT&Ts ISN to share them among multiple host computers.  Prior to this switch, Computer Services paid the expenses.  Telecommunication Services began paying for the new shared service.  When networking arrived on campus and we switched the modems over to network dialup, Telecommunication Services continued paying the bills and has paid them ever since.

The Telecommunication Services budget is to pay for the telephone service on campus, not the data dialup services.  So far, we have been able to expand this mission and buy dialup hardware, software, maintenance, and communication lines that make up our dialup services.  We are reaching the end, however, of what this budget can absorb and must find alternative funding sources.

We want better service, buy more!

We are continuing to investigate other funding sources including a substantial request from the state for a specific account to pay for dialup services.  Unfortunately, without a proper funding source, we cannot continue to operate a dialup service adequate to support all of our users.  Proposals have ranged from abandoning the service, getting 100% state funding, charging users for the service, limiting access to Missouri State University resources only, and the current "peak-policy".  The new policy is intended not to penalize legitimate users, but to make more connect time available to them by eliminating those individuals who were dominating their use (some averaging connect times in excess of 22 hours per day).   All options are still open.  But, without a clear, on going funding source, we cannot afford additional services at this time.

How much money have we spent on dialup?

This is not a trivial or easy question to answer because of the four generations of dialup equipment that Missouri State University has gone through and because of the timing of the spurts of growth.  Older modem technologies that have been replaced were funded 100% without student fees and those costs are not included below.  Rather than research old purchase orders for equipment we no longer use, we decided to pull together information on the current services only.  We are continuing to gather information, but here is what we have so far:

We used $71,820 from Wyrick funds, but all other expenses are paid from general operating funds with no ties to any student fees at all.  No additional Wyrick funds, computer usage fees, or tuition of any kind has funded any of the expenditures below, and these only include the costs of what is currently in service.  Some figures are currently estimates that will be replaced with actual values once the purchase orders are tabulated.

1.  Dialup costs for the new Express Dialup pool are not yet reflected in this yearly cost.