On Thursday, October 27, Verizon Business will conduct maintenance on the University’s phone system, specifically to the two trunks that route traffic to and from all VoIP (Voice-over-Internet Protocol) phones on campus. The scheduled maintenance will occur sometime between 12:01 a.m. and 6 a.m. that day. VoIP phones will lose the ability to make and receive calls for one hour (neither Verizon nor we know the exact time) during this early-morning time frame. That includes calls between VoIP phones as well as to and from VoIP phones, and it impacts VoIP phones that are forwarded or are programmed to automatically dial another number.
Forwarding that is programmed by Verizon or is in the Verizon cloud should work, but people should be prepared that a complete outage is a possibility during the one-hour maintenance period.
Some examples of VoIP phones impacted by the outage are:
- Hotline phone between the ITS Operations Center and the Department of Public Safety;
- Classroom Hotline phones;
- Door or gate entry phones;
- VoIP phones forwarded to another number; and
- VoIP phones programmed to automatically dial another number when going off-hook.
The ability to forward calls to the University’s voicemail system could be affected, but because the forwarding is handled in Verizon’s cloud, that might not be an issue. If the voicemail system is affected, however, calls will not be able to be forwarded to personal voicemail greetings – including calls to phone numbers with an automated attendant or a phone tree.
AT&T Centrex phone lines and UNC Health Care VoIP phone lines are not affected by the scheduled maintenance. AT&T lines that are not affected include:
- Call box, elevator and emergency building alarm lines;
- Department of Public Safety 911 phone lines;
- Point-of-sale phone lines (which includes many – but not all – fax lines); and
- Uniform Call Distribution Main Numbers (UCD).
The 919-962-HELP number will be operational, but the VoIP phones that answer these calls will not work.
Once the scheduled maintenance has been completed (by 6 a.m.), all the VoIP phones on campus should be fully operational again. Thank you for your patience during the Verizon Business maintenance early in the morning of October 27.