No student rooms in Ashdown House have phone lines; instead, each room has four Ethernet jacks (two are activated by default; ask to have the others connected if you need them), following MIT IS&T's vision that every member of the MIT community will someday use exclusively Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP), or their personal mobile devices. See the IS&T VoIP page for more information about VoIP. Standard land-line phones are available in the hallways, and cellular repeaters for major service providers will be installed around the building.

As of February 2009, the Verizon repeater is up and running. and T-Mobile, Sprint, and AT&T are being installed and MIT is aware of reception issues with these providers. If you have a T-Mobile, Sprint, or AT&T handset, and it does not function in your room, you can contact Denise Lanfranchi (dlan at mit dot edu) to loan out a VoIP handset until the repeaters are fully functional.