Excessive phone traffic during busy hours has helped prompt NIU telecommunications to upgrade the phoneline system so more calls can be handled at one time.

The “bouncing busy hour” each day is from 9:30 p.m. through 10:30 p.m., said Dale Pollett, supervisor of NIU Telecommunications.

Pollett said almost 20 “access paths,” or trunks, have been ordered through Contel of Illinois phone company, but there cannot be a guarantee that 100 percent of calls will be connected, even with the additions.

The addition of the new trunks is scheduled to be completed by Nov. 9.

Daily and monthly studies of the number of calls made involving the NIU campus were part of the decision to add more trunks, Pollett said.

There are three types of trunks for the phone system NIU uses, Pollett said. Two-way trunks deal with calls involving two local phones. Outgoing trunks are used for calls from local phones that are dialed to long distance or to a prefix starting with 1 or 0. Direct-inward dialing trunks are for calls from off-campus phones to on-campus phones.

Telecommunications constantly tries to have the phone system “upgraded or changed around,” Pollett said, including the increased number of phone trunks, introducing voice mail and Personal Identification Numbers for campus phones.