NIU students living in the residence halls now can view their phone bills online.

The university made bills available online in October, said Cindy Phillips, director of telecommunications at NIU. The decision was made over the summer, she said.

Phillips said telecommunications management, the department’s business office and computing support staff made the decision.

Eliminating paper bills would save about $15,000 a year, Phillips said. This includes the cost of printing invoices, envelopes, delivery, postage and labor for folding and stuffing envelopes.

Currently, phone bills are available to students both electronically and in hard-copy form.

“We would like to phase out the [paper] bills in the residence halls,” she said.

If telecommunications decides to go paperless, Phillips said students still could receive a paper bill if they wanted.

“If the overall decision is to go paperless, then you can make requests to get a printed one,” she said. Phillips said students wouldn’t have to pay extra to get a paper bill.

Phillips also said part of the decision to put phone bills online was because some students wait for monthly bursar statements to before paying their bills instead of looking at the invoices.

She also said online phone bills are convenient for students. To view phone bills online, students can visit http://phonebills.niu.edu. Students need to enter a z-number and phone authorization code to login.

From there, students can view the current balance and past balances. Each call is sorted by date and broken down further, listing the time, phone number called, place called, whether it was a weekday or weekend, duration of the call and the charge.

“Currently, students can’t pay online,” Phillips said.

She said to do that, bills would have to be paid with a credit card and somehow get deposited to the bursar’s office, which collects money for phone bills.

Phillips said sometime this semester, probably in December, telecommunications will ask the Residence Hall Association for input about online phone bills. She said they still are trying it out to see how students like it.

“If we get a positive feel, then we’ll go ahead with it,” she said.

Residence hall students have mixed feelings about online phone bills.

“I think that it’s a good idea to save money and everything, but I think bills would wind up being late,” said Ed Ciesielski, a freshman business major.

Ciesielski said he personally prefers paper bills.

“It comes to me instead of me going to it,” he said.

Colt Furnald, a sophomore finance major, said the new online bills don’t really affect him because he uses his cell phone. He did say, though, that bills should be on paper.

“No one’s used to checking bills online,” he said. “It’s a bill – you’re supposed to get it in the mail.”