June 15, 1999
Starting this fall, the university's residence halls, scholarship halls and Jayhawker Towers student apartments will be sporting new "312" prefixes.
About 2,300 personal student phones - student housing administrative numbers and residence hall front desk numbers are not affected - will have the new prefix. KU Networking and Telecommunications Services is working in cooperation with the Student Housing Department to change all existing telephone numbers in student living areas this summer.
The university acquired 5,000 phone numbers with the "312" prefix after using up its block of 10,000 numbers with the "864" prefix.
"We knew 10,000 numbers were not going to last forever," said Elizabeth Pesek-Shields, equipment planning technician with Networking and Telecommunication Services. "The need keeps growing and growing. This is good management of a limited resource."
Pesek-Shields attributed most of the growth to the replacement of phone systems in which whole departments shared a few phone numbers. Now, nearly all employees have their own phone number.
"KU once had more than 160 systems that shared phone numbers, now there are 20 systems," Pesek-Shields said.
Callers to disconnected "864" numbers will hear a recording telling them the number has changed and then be automatically routed to an operator who will provide the new "312" number.
Callers on campus may simply dial "2" plus the last four digits of a "312" phone number. Callers currently may dial "4" plus the last four digits to reach any "864" phone number.
Any difficulties in placing long-distance calls to the new numbers should be reported to the long-distance carrier of the number attempting to place the call.
Contact Todd Cohen, University Relations, (785) 864-8858 or tcohen@ukans.edu