A dedicated team of engineers and technicians is continuing to work to resolve recent issues with Penn State's telephone system, which have caused intermittent service interruptions since Monday, Aug. 1. While phones again appear to be stable this morning (Aug. 11), an outage affecting inbound and outbound calls late last night lasted for about 90 minutes. As experts and third-party vendors continue to work to identify the root cause of the recent outages, it is possible that phone service will be interrupted again.
Until the situation is resolved, the University community and the public will be kept up-to-date, with information at http://news.psu.edu, http://www.psu.edu/, and by PSUAlert for students, faculty and staff, when necessary.
"We understand that this has been a frustrating experience for our students, families and members of the public who are trying to reach the University by phone. We share in your frustration. Moreover, this is more than an inconvenience, and we understand the great sense of urgency in addressing such a critical University resource," said Matthew Decker, interim vice provost for information technology at Penn State. "I want to thank everyone who has been affected for their patience, and I apologize for the disruption caused by this failure. It remains our goal to restore normal voice service as soon as possible and we are diligently working to find the solution."
Since outages began, engineers have identified several pieces of hardware on the phone network that were failing. The failed equipment has since been removed; this has led to better performance since Aug. 9, but also has removed redundancy from the system, leaving the entire phone network in a more fragile state. In addition, an unusually high increase in call volume at the start of this upcoming academic year has exacerbated the technology issues. Engineers are working now to install new, replacement hardware that should return the network to steady operation.
According to Decker, while terrible in timing and impact, this situation further underscores the need to improve Penn State’s IT functions and organizational structures, as outlined in the recently announced new concept for IT operations. After phones have been returned to regular service, a review will be conducted and a report on the incident and steps to address deficiencies will be made publicly available, Decker said.
Updates will continue to be posted on the ITS Alerts site. Please report any additional issues by emailing the Network Operations Center at noc@psu.edu or calling 814-865-4662.
To contact a Penn Stater by email, visit the online Penn State Directory. For emergencies, dial 911 from a mobile phone. University Police can also be reached at policedispatch@psu.edu for non-emergencies.
Individuals attempting to contact the Office of the Bursar with questions about their student account statement can find answers to frequently asked questions online. Anyone unable to reach the Bursar's office by telephone can submit questions online at https://www.bursar.psu.edu/question.cfm.
For assistance related to Housing and Food Services, contact assignmentoffice@psu.edu for University Park and feedbackCWChfs@psu.edu for Commonwealth Campuses.