Students using the long-distance service for residence halls may be being charged if they let the telephone ring more than five times when dialing long distance.

But Guy Buzzannco, project manager for the AT&T/ACUS Service, said the service has never had a one-minute charging policy at University Park and that the charge must be a mistake. The service has notified its local representatives to correct the problem.

"Some services do require you to hang up or there is a one minute erroneous charge," Buzzannco said, "but we are using AT&T's most advanced network."

Jeff Kuhns, director of voice services and administration support in the Office of Telecommunications, said his office has received no complaints for the past several weeks on the random charging.

Although most networks rely on a timing mechanism to determine the start of billing, AT&T/ACUS Service relies on voltage to measure whether a call is legitimate, Buzzannco said.

"The network works 99.9 percent of the time," Buzzannco said. "Sometimes the computer might not receive the signal. I can't give any definite reasons why this might happen."

Buzzannco said if a person is charged they will give them credit with no questions asked. Students with questions can contact AT&T/ACUS at 1-800-445-6063.

Many students did not know if they had been billed in this manner or not.

Kavita Dave (junior-biochemistry) said she saw something on her bill that could have been a result of the five ring billing but could not determine if it was legitimate or not.

Jocelyn Ott (sophomore-business) said she noticed something like it when the service was first put into effect.

"I was making calls to another school and I think there was a connection being made," she said. "I was probably billed for a legitimate call."

President of West Halls, Gene Pfeiffer (senior-accounting), said he heard about the billing policy and called the service to get more information.

"I talked to five representatives who said it was true -- students were being billed for one minute," Pfeiffer said.

Pfeiffer said a sixth representative said the service was in the process of changing the one minute charging policy but some of the computers were still letting it slip through.

Latonya Spencer, a credit representative at AT&T, said the only way a student can be charged is if actual contact is made with a person or answering machine.

Spencer said the University has answer supervision -- a service that monitors calls to make sure a connection is made, which has been in effect since the AT&T/ACUS Service was implemented last fall.

Kuhns said students are not charged for remaining on the line and it is possible they are confusing this with the system in Behrend College where the one minute charge is in effect.