County wraps up phone episode

Lance Bishop, county information technology, gave a final county telephone update to county commissioners at their Monday workshop.

Bishop said while the main phone issue is fixed, there are still small issues that are popping up.

The county phone lines and numbers had been restored to regular service as of Thursday, Nov. 14, to conclude a month without service.

The county office lines went down Oct. 15 when Century Link was asked to disconnect many unused county telephone lines and somehow blew out the whole system.

“There are little hiccups,” Bishop said. “We had issues last week where the calls would come in and go to one of the automated phone trees and were not transferring because the tones were not doing a proper handshake pass off. We resolved that issue Friday.”

Bishop also mentioned other small issues they’ve been having which include getting a second fiber line to the Pullman District Court and push back on a couple of numbers in the original porting process going from Century Link to Granite Telecommunciations, the new service provider.

There are occasional issues arising, Bishop explained. The new phone provider has caller ID for outgoing calls.

“I wonder how they got away without providing caller ID before,” Bishop said. “In order to get federal and state grant money/funds, you had to provide caller ID for 911 purposes. That was a mandate years ago.”

Bishop mentioned without caller ID if someone was to call 911 and 911 was unable determine where the call came from, it would be hard to respond.

Commissioner Art Swannack said he appreciated Bishop and all those who put many hours in getting the phones up and running again.

The main courthouse phone number is 509-397-4622.