The College is set to reduce the amount of 9-1-1 misdials by retiring the number nine as a dial out access number this summer.
By the tentative date of July 1, the number eight will be the only way to access an outside line on the campus phone system, according to Telephone Systems Manager Charles Wilber.
It is a common experience for students and faculty to accidentally call 9-1-1 when trying to make a long distance call, tying up the town and state dispatchers and necessitating visits from Hanover Police and Safety and Security.
Plans to ensure a smooth changeover include a campus-wide information campaign over BlitzMail, newspaper advertising and various levels of College bureaucracy. Wilber said the College chose the summer term for the transition because it will have the least impact on the College community at a time when phone usage is fairly light. Additionally, he said there is a fair amount of technical programming to be completed in the coming months.
"It's not like flipping a switch," Wilber said.
9-1-1 calls are first answered by dispatchers at the New Hampshire 9-1-1 call center in Concord, then routed to the Hanover police and fire dispatch. If the caller hangs up before explaining the mistake, which most often is the case, the police are obligated to investigate the abandoned call. This resulted in over 1,200 service calls a year, according to Hanover Police.
Furthermore, Hanover police notify Safety and Security if the call originated on campus, prompting a separate investigation from Safety and Security. Thus, one abandoned 9-1-1 call from the College requires a response from three different agencies.
"It's dangerous because it ties up operators down in Concord and here in Hanover. Not only is it dangerous to Hanover but the entire state," Hanover Police Chief Nicholas Giaccone said.
The Hanover Communications Center receives approximately 100 abandoned or accidentally dialed 9-1-1 calls every month; Ninety percent of those calls originate from Private Breach Exchange phone systems, which require a caller to dial 9 to access an outside line. Ninety-nine percent of these PBX calls originate from College phones, according to Hanover Police communications director Douglas Hackett.
On Feb. 4, the town of Hanover changed its PBX system dial-out access digit from nine to eight in an effort to reduce mistaken 9-1-1 calls.
"It is slightly inconvenient to dial '8' in the beginning, so we were trying to set an example for the rest of the town to follow our lead," Hackett said.
Prior to July 1, 2003, dialing "8" had been used as a mechanism to flag College employees' personal long distance calls so that the College could bill those calls properly. This billing method became obsolete with the introduction of free long-distance, freeing the number eight as the digit to access an outside line.
This major change in telephone service might not have been necessary in the first place. Few students realize that it is not necessary to dial one to make long distance calls. Currently, one can dial eight or nine to access an outside line, then simply dial the area code and number. According to Wilber, the College has attempted to publicize this over the past ten years in order to reduce the number of accidental 9-1-1 calls by placing labels on all public phones and contacting department heads, but students and College employees persisted in dialing one before the area code they wished to call.
