There will be a short break in some University telephony services on Thursday 26 July.
University phone extensions will not receive incoming external calls on 26 July, 2018. Alternative numbers will be in place for critical services. Internal (extension to extension) calls, and outgoing calls will not be affected.
During the outage, there will be a banner on the University of Aberdeen home page advising external callers of temporary, alternative numbers for the switchboard, Security, and student-facing support services.
Why is this happening?
Our network provider’s aging infrastructure will become obsolete later this year. Taking advantage of this, we have upgraded our telephone systems and, at no extra cost, will be moving away from the old copper cable connections to a new SIP (Session Initiation Protocol) service.
The new service will be delivered to our two Data Centres via dedicated IP links, making it more robust and efficient. It will also be more flexible, allowing us to increase the number of lines dynamically and to route individual numbers externally at busy times such, as during clearing.
This planned maintenance is governed by Ofcom, whose rules dictate that it must occur during working hours.
How with this affect me?
Aside from improved call quality, you should notice no difference and all University extension and external telephone numbers will remain the same.