Our local contractor, Business Telephone Systems, working with our telephone system vendor, Black Box Network Services, installed the new server and phones in late September.  We are using the existing campus fiber network that was connected to the Bowl in the spring of 2009.  Howie McCausland and I tested the voice quality over the fiber with the vendor this past August.  Our network passed the test with flying colors.

The Snow Bowl now has a combination of IP phones in the offices and analog lines elsewhere.   The two major requirements for the new system were that it had enough analog trunk lines to accommodate the telephones at the lift load and unload stations and that the system not need dedicated bandwidth on the fiber.  A POE switch was installed to keep the IP phones going during a power outage, and in the event of a network outage the phones will failover to one of the four telephone company analog trunks remaining.

The consequence of reducing our maintenance costs is that we no longer have full-time telecommunications maintenance services. Thus, there may be a delay for individual telephone and network repairs and installations as of January 1, though major repairs will continue to be a high priority.

Ginnie Bukowski attended AMCOM’s Connect ’08 Conference in Minneapolis, October 12-15.  She learned about the stability of Telident’s future, our 911 system, which had been acquired by AMCOM earlier in the year, and their suite of other products – most recently CommTech Wireless purchased less than two weeks before.  VoIP, voice recognition, and 911 products were the focus of the sessions she attended.  The most significant moments during these days were the frequent opportunities to talk with Telident’s product manager and application engineer.  Suggestions that will improve the software were discussed.  She was told some of her and others’ ideas may make it into the 9.0 version, which is anticipated early next year.

Submitted by Peggy Fischel

The heavy rain in early August washed out the road to Burdick House at the Bread Loaf campus in Ripton. Burdick was home to some BL School of English summer faculty. Our telephone system contractor, Jim Fitzgerald, was called out to repair the telephone line in the house, but as the attached photos indicate, the road was not drivable. Intrepid Jim walked the 1/2 mile in to repair the phone connection.

In late July we installed an upgrade to our enhanced 911 notification system. Thanks to Rick James for his assistance in setting up the new server and applications. With this new equipment, we are using four dedicated circuits from existing PRI lines to send calls. This allows us to remove the FairPoint special service trunks and PS/ALI service at a savings of $7700 per year which will pay for the new system in less than two years.

In August several AlertFind administrators from the President’s staff were given a tutorial on the recently upgraded message composition features. Documentation was re-written in the form of a quick reference guide to aid administrators if/when they need to send an emergency campus notification.