Author Archives: Margaret Fischel

Student room telephone service to be removed January 1, 2010

LIS announced to students earlier this week that telephone services will be removing dial tone and telephone equipment from residential hall rooms unless a student requests that we keep their service in place.  The deadline for those requests is Sunday, November 15.  From then through December we’ll be working to re-route remaining dorm telephone lines and remove port cards with a goal of reducing our active landlines by 2000.   Ginnie Bukowski is shepherding this part of the project working with our contractor and facilities services.  During the week of December 7, recycling services will place bins in dormitories where students can deposit their telephones.  The phones will be moved to the Recycling Center where the equipment will be processed for either re-sale or recycling of parts. 

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.

AlertFind Expands to Schools Abroad

Submitted by Peggy Fischel

The Schools Abroad directors expressed interest in using the AlertFind emergency notification system at their schools. Liz Ross, associate director of Off-Campus Study, and I conducted two tests this winter with the directors and will train them as team administrators for their individual schools this summer.

Cell Phone Changes Afoot

Submitted by Peggy Fischel

With the recent announcement from the CFO that most College-owned cell phones must revert to personal service due to IRS requirements, Ginnie Bukowski kicked into high gear. She convened a well-attended Q&A meeting with affected parties who have Verizon Wireless service and is now consulting with small groups and individuals to help them through the process. LIS will continue to maintain the BlackBerry Enterprise Server and add users who require Outlook e-mail and calendaring service for business purposes. 

The new cell policy was devised by the Controller’s Office with input from Telephone Services.  Even if you are not entitiled to a College allowance, employees can get discounted service from Verizon Wireless.  If other carriers offer discounts, we will add that information in the future.

Update from Telephone Services

Submitted by Peggy Fischel

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.