Some students opening their phone bills this year are finding higher local phone call rates after Northwestern changed its residence halls’ phone carrier during the summer.

NU changed its phone carrier Aug. 5 from AT&T College and University Services to PaeTec in an attempt to decrease students’ long-distance costs. And while the switch gave students a lower per-minute long distance rate, several students have reported that the costs of their local phone calls have gone up dramatically.

Concerned students said they are being charged varying rates, but the most common billing is 3 cents per minute for local calls.

“For those of us who live locally, and have to call our parents all the time, it’s become much more expensive,” Weinberg senior Karen Hoffman said.

A PaeTec representative declined to comment and directed all questions to NU officials.

Tom Board, director of technology support services at NU, said he did not know the exact cost of local calls. He said it is complicated to determine the exact cost because charges for local call are based on distance rather than being a flat rate like long-distance calls.

Under PaeTec, the cost of long-distance calls dropped from 9 cents a minute to 6 cents a minute and international rates have dropped by an average of 10 percent, Board said.

Hoffman, who often calls Israel and is charged a rate of 11 cents per minute, is happy that the cost of international calls has gone down. But she said that “to have local calling be one-third the amount it costs to call Israel is strange.”

Despite some students’ concerns about the cost of local calls, Board said he believes that with PaeTec, the overall costs have gone down for students.

Board added that NU’s Information Technology has not received any complaints about the cost of local calls.

“We have no reason to believe this a widespread problem,” he said.

But some NU students are concerned with the higher cost, including Weinberg senior Bonnie Young.

Young, who makes numerous local phone calls, said she was surprised at the 3-cents-per-minute rate for local calls.

But Education junior Annie Wilkes said she was indifferent about the new rates, adding that she hasn’t seen much of a change in her phone bill because the local calls she makes are short.

Medill sophomore Jeff Campbell said the cost of local calls is not that important to him financially, but that he wishes he had known about the new rates.

“The university could’ve done a better job of informing students of what the phone charges were,” he said.