Accounting Services
TELECOMMUNICATION SERVICES
Effective: 11/1/82
Revised: 2/1/01
Information
Telecommunication Services, an operating unit of the Division of Computing and Information Technology (DCIT), is responsible for the coordination of the University telephone system. All requests for non-cellular telephone service should be submitted to Telecommunications on a Telecommunication Services Request Form, or on-line through the Telecommunications web site, and approved by the department head or director. Telecommunication Services personnel work with the telephone system users to determine their communications requirements, then develop the most economical and efficient systems, and coordinate all installation and change requests with the telephone company and other vendors. Telecommunication Services audits the communications vendor bills and prepares monthly internal rebillings to University departments utilizing the Monthly Telephone Invoice. Departments are invoiced for any installation charges, local service charges, and toll charges.
The Call Assistance Center (University switchboard) is manned between the hours of 8:00 a.m. and 12:00 midnight, seven days a week. It provides general campus information and locator service for all students, faculty, and staff.
Services provided by Telecommunication Services include campus departmental and student local access and long distance service, employee long distance authorization codes and credit cards, calling cards, the campus emergency telephones, telephone directories, electronic conference services, paging systems, and cellular telephone service.
Policy
In December 1988, the State Budget and Control Board issued statewide regulations which establish the
proper use of South Carolina state government telephone services. The intent of these guidelines is to permit South Carolina state government employees to make reasonable use of the telephone system, and simultaneously, to guard against abuse of telephone usage.
1. The use of state government telephone services is limited to official business. It is a violation of state law (Section 16-13-400) to abuse state telecommunications services. In addition to official business calls, the State Budget and Control Board will consider the following non-business telephone calls as being allowed within the policy:
a. Calls to notify the family, physician, etc., when an employee is injured on the job.
b. Calls to notify family of a schedule change when an employee traveling on state government business is delayed due to official business or a transportation delay.
c. An employee, traveling in the United States for more than one night on state government business, makes a brief call to his or her residence (averaging not more than one call per day).
d. An employee is required to work overtime without advance notice and calls within the local commuting area (the area from which the employee regularly commutes) to advise his or her family of the change in schedule or to make alternate transportation or child care arrangements.
e. An employee makes a brief daily call to locations within the local commuting area to speak to a spouse or minor children (or those responsible for them, i.e., a school or day care center) to make certain of their well-being and/or safety.
f. The employee makes brief calls to locations within the local commuting area that can be reached only during normal working hours, such as a local government agency or a physician.
g. An employee makes brief calls to locations within the local commuting area to arrange for emergency repairs to his or her residence or automobile.
h. A call that reasonably could not be made at another time if it is of moderate duration and it does not adversely affect the performance of the state telephone systems (e.g., unauthorized calls, made in rapid succession, to call-in contests on radio stations are detrimental to telephone system service levels).
2. Personal calls that must be made during normal working hours may be made over the commercial long distance network if the call satisfies the guidelines in Section 1 and one of the following provisions:
a. It is charged to the employee's home telephone number or other non-state government number.
b. It is made to a toll-free number.
c. It is charged to the party being called if it is a non-state government number.
d. It is charged to a personal credit card.
e. It is charged to a personal account administered by Telecommunications and billed directly to the employee at his or her home address.
Under normal circumstances, it will not be acceptable for an employee to use a university telephone account for long distance calls and then reimburse the university for the cost of those calls. However, in the case of cellular telephone use, if the employee exceeds the contracted number of "free" minutes in any month, the employee is expected to reimburse the university for the cost of the excess minutes up to the number of minutes used in that month for personal calls.
Departments will be responsible for monitoring the reimbursement of these calls and determining reasonable use of phone service.