At State College parties and bars this year, the infamous pick-up line "Can I have your number?" has been heard a lot less due to the fact that many off-campus students still do not have access to their own telephone lines.

Even though the Verizon strike ended more than a month ago, bickering between Verizon and CEI Networks has kept many without a dial tone.

CEI is a division of Conestoga Enterprises Inc. and purchases Verizon's phone services on a wholesale basis. This local competition avoids the unhealthy business practice of a monopoly over phone service in the area.

But before CEI can connect its customers, it needs to obtain important customer information from Verizon, an act that has been delayed in instances recently.

CEI claims that because of this delay, it has already lost more than 50 local customers.

CEI attorney Alan Kohler told The Daily Collegian, "We're hopeful that none of this was intentional on Verizon's part to get customers back.

"But you start to get suspicious after a while."

If Verizon is unable to process the customer information due to legitimate logistical reasons, it should look at ways to better facilitate this information transfer so that students' phone lines aren't left dangling.

If, however, Verizon is delaying the handing over of company records in order to gain customers it lost during its strike, it should rethink its business practices.

Phone lines are a necessity, especially in a college atmosphere. Students rely on them, not only for communication, but also because more professors are sending out assignments through Penn State e-mail.

Without access to phone lines, students could miss valuable assignments as well as losing the opportunity to communicate with friends and family.

Along with some students who do not have phone service at all, there have also been instances of CEI customers being disconnected from their services while Verizon technicians were working on the premises, installing second phone lines for other customers, whether they are with CEI or Verizon.

Adding another phone line for a customer is perfectly normal and legitimate, but disconnecting someone else's phone line in the process, especially one that belongs to your own customer, is inconvenient, inefficient, and ultimately a cause for complaint

Although it is impossible to pin the majority of the blame on either of the two companies, the finger pointing needs to stop and both need to begin putting the customers, in this case the students, first.

Penn State students deserve the courtesy to hear from both companies the reasons for their telephone installation delays.