Yeah, but what PBX in the world would have "99XX" in their numbering plan, even in a 5/6/7 digit environment?
The only time that 99 comes into the picture is if you need to dial 911.. 6 (6* if dtmf phone) to get campus dialtone, 9 to get telco dialtone, 911 to get emergency services, or 6*-9-911. everywhere else on campus. you have to dial 9-911.
Was this a problem or did it just happen to be something that was discovered?
We had a few phantom 911 hangups reported to us, and I figured out how the dialing error could cause them..
I am just curious since I can't imagine that the radio station got any support from the college itself.
The station has a long history of telecom hackers, dating back many years.. The station has had their own cables in the tunnels since at least the 1960's, and possibly earlier.. prior to the 711B, they used a system of WWII vintage EE-8 field phones, some of which survive to this day as a phone-system-of-last-resort. The station is an intregal part of the campus emergency plan, and multiple layers of redundancy are provided throughout the station facilities.
Based upon your previous posts about the 711B, it sounds like the station was thrown to the wolves with regard to campus telecommunications.
Not really.. the stations use of the 711B predates the campus pbx by about 10-15 years. The campus was previously served by centrex, and before that, probably a cord board.
The station formerly had direct telco trunks to the 711B, with a couple tielines to the campus, but switched onto the campus pbx in order to take advantage of the campus bulk rates, extended calling area, and toll restrictions and accounting. I'm not convinced that it was the best decision in the long run, due to the monopoly pricing of the campus telecom services, but due to other changes, switching back would be even more costly. (telco has since abandoned and removed their old cable into the building, so the station would have to lease pairs from campus telecom for backhaul. If they had enough trunks to justify a T-1, it might be a different story.)
We were never sure, but we may have had the only ground start trunks on campus..
