Welcome to the Telecommunications Department's Telephone pages!  Here you will find information on the products and services we provide to the Campus Community.

In the beginning, UTM contracted telephone connections from the local telephone company, but as the University grew the decision was made to provide telephone services in-house.  The original telephone switch was a Rohlm, and later a NEC NEAX 2400 MDS.  In 2004 advances in technology brought about the upgrade to a NEC NEAX 2400 IPX that provides Voice over IP (VoIP) functionality in addition to the traditional telephone services.

Currently there are over 3000 "Station Codes" (extensions) programmed into our telephone switch, also known as a PBX (Private Branch eXchange).  With the new PBX we also obtained our own "Office Code" (prefix) of 881, or UT1.  Our section of Tennessee is in the 731 "Area Code", so any UTM number will be 731-881-xxxx, where "xxxx" is the four digit extension.  Using a campus phone to call another campus phone, all you have to dial is the four digit extension since it doesn't go past our PBX.

Calls to numbers not on campus require dialing a 9 for an outside line.   You'll get a "second dialtone" and then it's just like dialing from home.

Telephone connections in dorms and residences are all "analog", so you can plug in any standard phone you want to use.  These numbers also have Voicemail, with enough mailboxes to match the occupants of the suite.  Except for the new University Village Apartments, which have a single telephone jack in the kitchen of the common area, telephone wiring was installed long before data and cable TV.  In these other buildings, look for a standard wall plate or surface mount wall jack to plug into.  The box with the cable TV jack in it also contains your ethernet connection, but not your phone.

Telephone connections in academic and administrative buildings can either be standard analog or digital.  Digital telephones are useful for receptionists since they offer multiple "line appearance" buttons with lights to let you know if someone's line is busy before you transfer a call.

Telephone service is provided to the campus primarily through underground cables.  At some remote sites aerial cables are used.  For one building we have a pair of Quintum TenorAX VoIP units and a wireless 802.11a router to send dialtone to seven analog phones plus a fax across the data network.  We also have QTelnet FreeRide VoIP boxes for temporary two-line analog services if needed.  They were, when the cable to the Chancellor's Residence got dug up!

We've been testing the NEAX proprietary DTerm IP phones both on campus using our LAN and off campus across commercial CATV and DSL broadband using the VLAN.  NEAX also has a PC softphone application we've been having fun with.  This is where VoIP really shines... you take your campus phone with you wherever you have an internet connection.  It's great for saving on long distance, but the problem is, if you dial 911 you'll still get the Campus Police!