Update on Phone System
Steve Zink, Vice President of Information Technology and Dean of Libraries, can be reached at stevenz@unr.edu. (Photo by: Theresa Danna-Douglas)
Thursday, January 4, 2007
By: Steven Zink
UNR's telephone system implementation DID NOT take place over the partial winter closure. There were reasons outside of the University's control that would have placed unacceptable risk to the campus and the success of the switch to the new system.
IT is working with NEC and AT&T to revise the switch out date, but we are targeting the Martin Luther King 3-day weekend (Jan. 13-14-15). This would allow the transition to occur prior to classes resuming and academic faculty officially returning to campus.
The reasons for not proceeding with the originally planned date are these:
* Some phone numbers were prematurely cut by AT&T without warning. Those numbers were then restored.
* In order to proceed with the new phone system, many new telephone numbers had been ordered. The new prefix (682) was not yet recognized by all telephone systems in the country. We expect this to be resolved by AT&T in the next few days.
* AT&T has not completed the 911 telephone assignments. In other words, the detailed information necessary for 911 to get geographical information was not active. At the time of this message (on Dec. 21, 2006), AT&T was still working on the issue.
