Student flat residents do not have to fight over the phone bill despite the disappearance of the KPN phone ticker. Four UT-students have designed an alternative registration-device. And set up their own company: Veller Phone Assistance.
In about two weeks the Veller Tick Counter will come on the market. Last year the design was the runner up in the design contest 'Count your ticks'. The competition was organised by Delft Recruitment and a number of Delft study societies to devise a successor to the KPN phone ticker. First prize, f 2,500, went to Delft, and the UT-students went home with half that amount.
In November the Twente runners up found out via the website of the Delft University student that the Delft invention would not be taken into production because of high production costs. 'Then everything suddenly moved very rapidly', Leon Koesoemowidjojo announces on behalf of Veller Phone Assistance. 'We were already doing further work on our tick counter, but then we increased our efforts. At this moment we are still testing in co-operation with the KPN and in one week production will start.' Ten days after that the first counters will be supplied, which will be assembled by a sheltered workshop in Hengelo.
The 'old' counter is worthless from March onwards. The KPN will gradually stop supplying the pulses necessary to the operation of the counter. Many students will then be in trouble. The KPN did suggest some expensive alternatives. Installing a ISDN-connection is one possibility. A student flat will get more numbers and the calls are easy to record. But, this will cost over 350 euro and is not a solution to houses with more than eight people. A specified bill can also be a solution. But it is a great deal of bother to unravel the bills.
The four students from Twente (EL, TN and TBK) Tom Blauwendraat, Maarten Tromp, Gert van Kempen and Leon Koesoemowidjojo, will introduce an affordable and - according to themselves - easy-to-install alternative. The calls are registered on a detachable module. The small box can be connected to the computer. Once every two months the registered calls are compared to the on-line-KPN-bills. Then calls and residents are matched.
The device can, for the moment, only be obtained via the Veller Phone Assistance website: www.tikkenteller.nl. For 75 euro all calls will again be registered neatly. The young enterpreneurs will not become 'substantially rich' from all this, Leon expects. 'But that was not the object of the exercise for us. It will be enough if we can somewhat reduce our study debt with the income.'
