Student: Phil

Phil is nineteen and in his second year at College where he has been living in a College Hall of residence. He has his own bedroom with ensuite but shares a kitchen with the rest of his corridor. The Hall was modified last summer as localnet was introduced to the town.

Scroll down to read all the ways localnet impacts his life or click on a bullet point below to jump to the item that most interests you.

Hall of Residence Modified for localnet

Phil's hall of residence was refurbished over the past summer and as part of this exercise, a number of features were introduced to let the students make good use of the town's new localnet service.

The SmartHatch Lift shaft (=Elevator shaft)

On every floor, where one of the original lifts used to be, there is now a front panel of a localnet SmartHatch. This panel includes two identical sections, each about three feet across with:

Collecting Stuff

Phil wishes there were a SmartWaiter panel in his room like all the new apartment blocks being built in the town have but reckons that having to walk thirty yards to the lobby on his floor isn’t too bad. He gets alerted via his iPhone when there's a box for him to collect. He doesn't have to rush, even if he has ordered chilled or frozen food among his groceries as he knows these are kept in temperature controlled sections of the lift shaft. It even has a section that's hot enough to keep pizzas warm indefinitely!

When he strolls down to the lobby he sometimes has to wait for a minute or two - much like you would at a pair of cash machines. Most students on his floor though have got the hang of staggering the times at which they go to the machine - at least in the morning when everyone wants their breakfast box and post. Or was that “timing their stagger to the machine”... Phil's not sure. It did take quite a few rounds in the union bar for them to thrash out a schedule (or so he's told by someone who remembers the evening).

Other students have been issued with a contactless room key but as Phil has an iPhone he can use that instead. The SmartHatch senses that he (or actually his iPhone) is in front of the delivery hatch and his box or boxes appear in the hatch a few seconds later. He reckons most of the boxes must already be on his floor as it only takes a few seconds for them to appear. The refrigerated or heated ones take a few seconds more as they're brought up or down from wherever the chilled/heated sections are.

Post, Newspaper and Breakfast

Phil owns two boxes about the size of large cereal packets. These hold his breakfast, post and newspaper. Each morning he takes the previous day's box (now half filled with all the junk mail and other waste paper he's generated in the past day) and pops it in the deposit slot while the system is fetching his other box.

Last year he had to give up having his favourite breakfasts as he could only buy muffins in packs of 6 and half were stale by the time he got round to them. He also found that the time taken shopping meant he couldn't afford to vary his diet much so he ended up having the same thing day after day. Now he can order a single pain au chocolat or Danish depending how he feels at night. He does most of his ordering from his iPhone localnet app so there's rarely any need to use the touch-screen on the SmartHatch.

Vending on Steroids

If Phil is peckish when he comes to pick up his  OmniBox of groceries during the day, he'll often pull out his iPhone as he leaves his room and by the time he reaches the SmartHatch has selected his favourite chocolate bar. As he waves his iPhone in front of the vending slot it drops down for him. It's automatically charged to his localnet account and he can see his current balance on his iPhone.

The range of items available from the vending slot is pretty impressive now - and much greater than when there was a bank of three identical vending machines on each floor. He can now get fresh fruit, pots of ice cream, bakery goods and sandwiches as well as the traditional crisps, sweets and drinks. Hmm... maybe that's got something to do with his belt coming in a notch this term? And with his acne clearing up?

Phil reckons there have been far fewer suspicious looking individuals around the halls since all the vending machines were replaced by localnet. With no cash changing hands there's less temptation for thugs to come in off the street with a crowbar as he knows has happened in the past.

The vending service also seems to run out of stuff much less often... come to think of it, he can't recall anything on the list having been “out of stock” all term! Oh, except for the Crunchies but that was an “official” experiment to see how many it held as he orchestrated a deliberate spike in demand for Crunchies after the first XV retired to his common room last week. (96 in case you were wondering).

Groceries

Phil doesn't believe in having too varied a diet so he's set up a standing order for most of the groceries he gets through each week. Twice a week he gets a box with milk, beer and a loaf etc. He does most of his ordering using his iPhone – sometimes when he should be listening to lectures but he knows if he orders things before 10.00 then they’re waiting for him when gets back around 13:00.

Recycling

Phil always hangs on to one PaperBox and one  OmniBox. The former he fills with waste paper and cardboard while the latter has dividers that split it into four compartments for glass (which he seems to get through quite a lot of), metal (mostly beer cans) and plastic (tonic bottles). He doesn’t use the food waste compartment as there’s a shared box in the kitchen for that.  Any time he gets a new box delivered he takes the previous one back to the SmartHatch when he next leaves the building.

Entertaining

Despite the limited kitchen facilities, Phil likes to entertain a few friends once a week. He loves being able to select the menu online and have exactly the right amounts of all the ingredients shipped to him in one box that afternoon. As there’s not much equipment in the kitchen, he has his profile set to exclude recipes that need more than two hot-plates or a food processor. He’s happy to pay a little extra to skip some of the tedious and more challenging tasks – like trimming a joint of meat.  He loves not having to buy whole bottles of all the ingredients and also hires the baking trays etc. that he’d otherwise have to beg, steal or borrow. He especially likes the “Life's too short” (for washing dishes) option and sends them back dirty for just a few pennies more.

Books

Phil reads a novel a week and now orders these online via Localnet and sends them back when he’s finished with them. It’s a lot cheaper than buying them plus his room isn’t slowly sinking under a mountain of books. He also feels better about the environmental impact – knowing they’ll be read again.

Laundry

The best thing about Localnet though is affordable laundry. Phil has persuaded his Mum to do two boxes of laundry and ironing a week on her village's localnet (probably for students at the university down the road from his home) in return for getting two boxes of his laundry a week washed and ironed by someone on his local delivery circuit!

Three  OmniBoxes hold his laundry. Two of these are under his bed at any one time One he shoves dirty clothes into (luckily the lids are air-tight) and the other has the washed and ironed clothes that he's working his way through. He can actually keep up to four of the  OmniBoxes under his bed which has purpose built drawers under it that each takes one such box.

If his Mum wasn't earning him those credits he'd have to go for the basic “wash and dry” service - which basically gets your clothes into the same state as you got back from the laundry room last year. The differences being that now you don't have to queue up, sit with it or hope that those socks you picked up off the floor were in fact yours. Just the hour a week saved on this task is letting him fit in an extra sports lesson this term.

Phil doesn’t need to pay the premium rates for fast turnaround or fancy wrapping and starching. He’s more than happy with the basic “like your mum does it” service. Once he got a box of clothes back that had barely seen the iron and could have done with a better wash – but he left a feedback message through his localnet account and opted not to use that person’s services again. He didn’t feel bad about it like he does if he ever gets bad service on eBay. He knows the system automatically takes his anonymous feedback into account in deciding who gets first crack at the available work from other people and that his clothes will not be sent to that individual again. The system obviously keeps most people on their toes as it’s very rare that he has any complaints.

Storage

If Phil could change one thing about his University room, he would make it bigger. The students haven't got a lot of space so it's very easy for rooms to get so cluttered they descend into very unpleasant places to live and work. Last year, the only option open to him was to put stuff he rarely needed into cardboard boxes and lug it down to the storage room in the basement. However, getting anything back was a nightmare. The porters had to escort you and wouldn't do so out of hours. It was also damp and musty.

Now, for just a few pence per box per week he can store stuff securely in the localnet stack and get it back within a minute or two. By the time he walks to the SmartHatch shaft it's usually there for him. He's been keeping his sports kit and last terms books there until they're needed again and his room is much less cluttered.

All in All...

Phil reckons life at Uni is much more fun this year now they have localnet. It saves him time every single day so he's got more time for the things he loves. He's also eating a more varied diet, can get into his room without crampons and has even persuaded a “girl” to do so!

Benefits