The preceding Burlington Free Press article was published on 11/12/09.  In addition to Middlebury, UVM and St. Michaels College recently removed their room phones.  But I do find  UVM’s claim that they saved a half million dollars supporting 2800 student phone lines rather amazing.

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.

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.

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.

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.