The future of ITS

In the world of telephone service, companies talk about the five nines. That is, a given telephone is expected to be available 99.999 percent of the time, or no less than six minutes in an entire year. For Yale's administration, some of those minutes will come in late December, when the Private Branch Exchange (PBX) that runs its phone system is replaced. And this is just the tip of a decade-long iceberg that promises to change phone service as Yale knows it, part of a worldwide shift in technology.

Student phone service will remain constant over the next year-apart from a switch to a new dialing prefix this summer, leaving both 432 and 436 for the administration-precisely because ITS has grander plans for students. "One of the key reasons for not changing student dialtone at this point in time is the fact that ITS staff firmly believes in the potential of IP, and it views student service as a nearer term implementation community," Associate Director of Telecommunications at ITS John Meickle said. Internet Protocol (IP) voice technology is already evident in services that allow users to make phone calls from their computers. But in its eventual manifestations, the calling may be cheaper and easier for regular phone service.

Another possible avenue for the expansion of student phone service is providing cellular phone service through an on-campus network, instead of having students dialing outside of Yale to reach a destination that might be down the street. Although Yale is already starting to experiment with a wireless Internet technology currently in broad use at Carnegie Mellon, the wireless Internet service and wireless voice service have only limited crossover at this time.

ITS has historically been careful about adopting new technologies. Meickle explains that Yale is waiting for products using new technology to become more reliable-as well as to reach commodity status and reasonable pricing. "The goal is always to get as much use as possible out of the equipment that the University purchases and not wind up with useless, legacy equipment," he said.

In fact, the new PBX from Northern Telecom comes with something known as "evergreen," which allows for seamless and cost-effective upgrades to newer technologies and features. "We have been briefed by Northern on their future plans and anticipate that this system will help the University transition to future IP and wireless services," Meickle said. Voice over IP "will be initially deployed within a few years, but it will most likely be closer to a decade before it is the common infrastructure for voice services."

The voice mail system, although separate, is also being examined for upgrade possibilities. "While no decision has been made to purchase a new voice mail system, some of the features of the products looked at include unified messaging," Meickle said. This includes the ability to browse and manage voice mail messages from a computer, a common mailbox for wireless and regular phones, and a service similar to instant messaging.

Ironically, this all comes at a time that students seem to be choosing not to use voice, and certainly not Yale's comparatively expensive long distance. "We have seen erosion of student toll traffic as they use alternative services," Meickle explained. "We believe that the widespread use of e-mail, chat, the web, cell phones, and instant messaging is causing the stabilization of wired voice traffic. Overall, people are spending much more time communicating but are doing it with a greater and more appropriate variety of tool and technologies."

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