May 20, 1998

TO: UCSC Campus Community

FROM: Patrick LeCuyer, Acting Assistant Vice Chancellor,
Communications & Technology Services

RE: Telephone Problems

Over the past two weeks, some UCSC academic and administrative staff have experienced incoming or outgoing telephone call problems. In most cases, the problems have been characterized as a loss of voice connection between two parties; however, other problems have been reported as well. We believe that most of these problems are a direct result of recent changes we have made to move from analog to digital trunk lines between the campus and Pacific Bell. Our reason for making the change is that the digital lines provide increased capacity at a lower cost.

Communications and Technology Services regrets the persistence of these problems. Ericsson and Pacific Bell, our telecommunications service providers, have been working intensively to identify and correct all problems. Several problems have been fixed and trouble reports have progressively declined to a handful per day.

Still, a few users are encountering call problems and we are working aggressively with senior vendor engineering teams to resolve the remaining problems. In order to complete the testing and resolve the remaining problems, we have agreed to allow Ericsson and PacBell to continue testing the new circuits for one more week (through Friday, 5/29/98). However, if during the week, we experience a significant increase in problem reports we will revert back to our analog circuits.

Please continue to call in problem reports to the regular telephone trouble reporting number (x9-3111). With so few users now affected, every trouble report is a vital indicator of whether or not a problem has been corrected.

Thank you for your patience with this frustrating situation.

Sincerely,
Pat Lecuyer
Acting Assistant Vice Chancellor
Communications & Technology Services

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