thomas@mvac23.uucp (Thomas Lapp) (02/24/90)
>From: Dan "the Man with the Plan" Ross <dross@fluffy.cs.wisc.edu> >Subject: Re: Centrex and 9xxx Numbers >Date: 22 Feb 90 08:00:38 GMT >Organization: U of Wisconsin CS Dept >part of the 495 exchange. Intracampus calls are made by the last _5_ >digits, so there are numbers of the form 471-9XXX. The dorm >"exchange" includes 495-5XXX and 495-3XXX and possibly more. The gap >The fun arises when you dial a number 495-XXXX from on campus; unless >you know someone lives in the dorm, you just have to try it: >9-495-XXXX or 5-XXXX. (There are state and city offices, as well as a >cookie store (!) on 495-XXXX.) And the wrong one will not work! This brings to mind the sad story of the installation of a new phone switch by West Virginia University Hospitals, Inc. to service their brand new hospital. The background: The old hospital was associated with the University and thus was part of the university-owned Centrex system. All university numbers are of the form 293-xxxx. When dialing within the Centrex, only the last 4 digits are needed. However, when the new hospital was built, it was (and is) owned by WVUH, Inc, which is a private company. They decided that they would install their very own Rolm switch and also leased? the 598-4xxx from the local phone company. This meant that if you are in the community, you can dial someone's hospital room with 598-4xxx. Now here is where the poor planning comes into play. They found that 1000 numbers wasn't enough for the hospital, and so they added the 3xxx series to the Rolm switch. However, they did not get this group from the local phone company, which means that 598-3xxx is guaranteed to not be a number at the hospital. So from within the hospital there are a bunch of internal-only telephone numbers (mostly nurses stations and numbers that people outside the hospital really shouldn't need to call). But the problem gets worse. Many of the doctors do not have offices in the new hospital, but still have their offices in the old building which is served by the Centrex system. Due to cost and probably politics, it was decided that they would keep their old phones and not receive service off of the Rolm switch. But doctors ARE one community that would have a need to access the 3xxx internal-only numbers in the new building. Beginning to see the problems? One solution might be that a system be set up so that when they dial 3xxx or 4xxx from their Centrex phone, that it go to the Rolm switch and be routed correctly. However, that was out since 3xxx and 4xxx are already assigned numbers elsewhere on campus on the Centrex. So the solution was to put a 'key' in front of the number in order to force the call to be routed from Centrex to Rolm or vice-versa. The third thing wrong here was that Rolm and the Centrex can't use the same prefix on numbers. So if you are calling from Centrex to Rolm, you preface the number with "*1" and if going the other way you have to preface with "11". A most undesirable solution, since it requires that you know where you are and where you are trying to get to and you have to memorize two methods of calling. The last item does not relate directly to the telephone switches themselves but do relate. Some years ago, the hospital migrated from voice pagers to digital pagers which display four digits in sequence using one LED digit. That was fine when it was installed. When 4095 showed up, you dialed 4095 and it went through. However, now that there are two sets of 3xxx and 4xxx, there is no way to tell if you are being paged for 293-4095 or 598-4095 when 4095 shows up in the display. So the bright folks in administration decided that numbers in the new hospital are to be paged as 5xxx and 6xxx (ie. take number, add 2000 to it, then enter that as the page). This is nice if you remember to do this. Or remember that it is the new building which has to have 2000 added rather than the old building. Voice paging over the two building intercom system gets kind of funny too. "Dr. Weiser, please call 4565 in Ruby" or "Dr. Jones, please call 4354 Health Sciences" (Ruby = Ruby Memorial = Rolm; Health Sciences = Centrex). Oh the joys of being able to operate your very own phone company. Looks like the learning curve for some people is going to be pretty steep. I guess the obvious solution in this case would be to install 5 digit dialing for extensions within either system. But I guess since the University did not want to have to change the way the ENTIRE university dialed extensions, they did not go this route. - tom internet : mvac23!thomas@udel.edu or thomas%mvac23@udel.edu uucp : {ucbvax,mcvax,psuvax1,uunet}!udel!mvac23!thomas Europe Bitnet: THOMAS1@GRATHUN1 Location: Newark, DE, USA Quote : Virtual Address eXtension. Is that like a 9-digit zip code? [Moderator's Note: This reminds me of a department store in downtown Chicago which had centrex for how many ever years. ROLM sold them a bill of goods, so they dumped centrex for a ROLM switch. They kept all the numbers they had under centrex and set them up as DID to ring straight through to the extensions they had always been on. But like your case, they needed more extensions so they installed a bunch on the ROLM that do *not* relate back to the identical CO number. Only they never bothered to explain all this to the employees with the new style extension numbers who assumed they too could receive calls from their personal friends all day without going through the store operator. For almost a month, Chicago City Colleges (the people with the CO numbers like the new extensions at the store) wondered why they got all those wrong numbers. Talk about Dumb with a capital /D/. PT]