Call volume overburdens University phone system

In the wake of yesterday's sobering events in New York and Washington, D.C., the first impulse of many at Princeton and across the country was to get in touch with loved ones in these two targeted areas. Yet that seemingly simple call often proved difficult in practice.

Many students expressed frustration at not being able to call out of the University to New York or Washington yesterday morning. Mary Katherine Sheena '04 noted that "it took a while" for her roommate, Alison Jonas '04, to contact her family in New York.

University Manager of Telecommunications Frank Ferraro noted that yesterday's telecommunication tie-ups were a result of the sheer volume of calls and that the situation was not unique to the Princeton campus.

He explained that the PSTN, or Public Switch Telephone Network, through which all telephone carriers send their calls, can only handle a certain amount of traffic.

"This morning, everyone wanted to pick up the phone and call New York," observed Ferraro. "It's like trying to put 12 cars side-to-side on a three-lane highway. It's just not going to work."

That was just the situation on campus yesterday morning until about 10:30 a.m. All telephone carriers, including the three carriers used by Princeton, were "absolutely deluged," said Ferraro. At the worst point in the communications difficulties yesterday, only about two out of every 10 calls were going through, he said.

Students unable to call out heard a "reorder" tone or the message that "all circuits are busy." The problem was compounded, Ferraro said, by students who, understandably, would stay on the line after being put on hold, hoping somehow to get through to family or friends in New York and Washington.

Princeton's Private Branch Exchange, used to handle campus phone calls, was "never a problem," said Ferraro. "We have about 100 horsepower on that exchange, and we were only at about 15." Because of that capacity, students did not have problems placing calls within the Princeton campus.

In an effort to remedy the telephone difficulties, Ferraro said, carriers soon rerouted calls going into New York. Instead of sending the calls directly into the city, the carriers re-routed them to run through Philadelphia, Albany, NY, and a string of various other cities before arriving in New York.

The carriers dealt first with re-routing erratic phone lines for emergency personnel that are essential to the operations of ambulances and police in New York. Once the emergency lines had been secured, the carriers turned their attention to the private sector.

The re-routing affecting Princeton was done around 10:30 a.m. Afterwards, there was a significant increase in the number of calls that were getting through, Ferraro said, from approximately 20 to 50 percent.

Though there was an improvement in outgoing calls from Princeton in the late morning, incoming calls to the campus began to suffer because telephone lines had been redirected to cover the outgoing calls. Ferraro noted that the lines were brought back to cover incoming calls around 11:15 a.m., and the problem was soon remedied.

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By the early afternoon, between 80 and 90 percent of calls from the Princeton campus were going through without a problem.

Ferraro noted that those using cell phones might have had slightly better luck with call completion, since cell phones do not run through the PSTN.

However, he cautioned that just as with regular phones, if the volume of calls made on cell phones becomes too great, the same problems could occur.

A representative from Dean of Undergraduate Students Kathleen Deignan's office noted that students were encouraged yesterday to use e-mail rather than telephone whenever possible in order to free the lines for those with an urgent need to get through and that students with such a need were helped by the dean's office on an individual basis.