Technology center says phone issue resolved

By Bill J. Perry

After two weeks of swapping circuit boards and other electronic components, the university’s main phone switch has been fixed, said Darrell Martin, interim director of Information Technology Services.

More or less.

“They found some problems and have replaced some components in the telephone switch,” Martin said, referring to technicians from Altura Communications, which maintains the university’s phone system. “But they’re still trying to find an elusive problem.”

An alarm signal occasionally activates to indicate a problem with the system, but technicians have been unable to determine its cause. So far, the problem doesn’t seem to affect phone service.

“There is something in the alarm system that is sounding a spurious alarm, causing the system to react inappropriately,” Martin said. “It could be another card in the switch or a faulty cable.”

Technicians have been replacing system components in an effort to find defective hardware, but Martin said, “It’s time-consuming because each step along the way they want to see if the problem occurs again.”

When the semester began, a problem surfaced involving one of the three switching systems that direct phone calls on campus, causing some frustration among users. At times, the switch would stop working and go through a reboot, causing affected phones to go dead and, at other times, a delay in getting a dial tone though calls already connected didn’t seem to be affected.

It appears that those problems have been corrected, Martin said.

“Since replacing major cards, we’ve not experienced any problems since then,” he said. “It has been up and running without a blip, nothing.”

Meanwhile, technicians monitored the phone system through the holiday weekend, remotely and on site, to determine the source of the alarm.

“It’s good because there’s been no report of problems,” Martin said.