Telephone Services In Student Rooms

 Every student room at the Queens' main site and all of its hostels, houses, and flats has a telephone socket offering service from NTL. Do not attempt to contact NTL about these services: everything you need to do can be done within college.

At the main college site, and all its hostels (except the flats in Newnham and at the Boathouse), the NTL ConnectEd service is provided. The sockets are permanently active. Telephone service is obtained by purchasing a Calling Card from the Porters' Lodge, for £3, £5, or £10. In some rooms, the College has provided a telephone instrument, otherwise the student is responsible for provision of the telephone instrument itself.

At the Queens' flats in Newnham village and at the Boathouse, the NTL Centrex CU2 service is provided. The telephone account is held by the College (not by the residents), and the socket is permanently active. Telephone rental charges are included in the rent of the flat, and call charges are passed on to the residents by the College. It might or might not be necessary for the resident to provide a telephone instrument to plug into the telephone socket, depending on the generosity of former residents.

There are two types of telephone service available from NTL:

• the NTL ConnectEd service. External public calls are made by dialling 9 followed by the PIN number on your calling card, and are charged to the balance of the card's account at the tariff published by NTL. Internal calls to other student bedrooms, and to the University telephone network, are free of charge, and do not require use of the PIN. When the value of the Calling Card account has been used up, it can be topped up from a UK credit or debit card. Users who do not possess a UK credit or debit card will need to purchase a new Calling Card. To make free calls to other bedrooms, just dial the 5-digit NTL extension number. To make free calls to the University telephone network, dial 19 followed by the 5-digit University extension number, for instance 19-35511 for Queens' Porters' Lodge.
   
• the Centrex CU2 service, which is available only to post-graduate students and staff of the University or College. This involves payment of a higher monthly rental than the basic NTL domestic service. Calls between CU2 telephones and extensions on the University telephone network (or any other Centrex CU1 or CU2 telephone) are free of charge (just dial *1 and then the 5-digit university extension number, for instance *1-35511 for Queens' Porters' Lodge). The tariff for charged calls enjoys a discount over the normal public NTL rates.

The Centrex CU2 service is available at any address in the NTL Cambridge service area - not just in college properties. The Centrex CU2 telephone service will look attractive to those post-graduate students or staff who wish to use the University's dial-up modem service (Magpie) for data network connections, because the calls to the dial-up modems will be free of charge. Changing between Centrex CU2 and any other telephone service, or vice-versa, will involve a change of telephone number. Applications for Centrex CU2 service require counter-signature by the College as proof of entitlement. As a matter of college policy, Queens' will not agree to the conversion of a ConnectEd socket to the CU2 service, because of the difficulties of tracking changes of number and student room swaps.

At College shared houses, in addition to the bedroom socket at which the student can use the ConnectEd service described above, the College provides one communal Centrex CU1 telephone, providing free calling between that house and any extension on the University network (or other CU1 or CU2 telephones), and permitting incoming calls from the public network.