As many of you are aware we lost our 5-digit dialing function after they upgraded our firewall. Although they haven’t made it clear why that happened, regaining the function with our current phone system is unlikely. That said, Campus is working on a new solution. It involves upgrading the equipment that processes the voice-internet-network (VIN) and upgrading the VOIP software. What this means to us at the Center, is that we would terminate our current phone service and have campus be our service provider. This should translate to huge savings in what we currently pay annually. It will also mean that we could get new features such as being able to use a cell phone as your “office” phone in lieu of a desk phone. (You retain your personal cell phone and the system will assign a WSU extension to go with your cell number so when someone calls the WSU number it automatically goes to your cell.)
What we are unsure of at the moment is the actual cost to us. Campus feels that the cost to us would be recovered by the savings in service payments. They will be sending us a proposal with all the specifics soon. If all works out, we could have the new system in place by the end of the year. Stay tuned!