Frequently Asked Questions

• General information
• Billing
• Telephone service
• Wireless
• Cable television and video distribution
• Two-way radio system
• Wiring and wire management

A service request may be required.

• Campus Voice Mail trouble: Call the helpdesk at 2-9001 or email the helpdesk at vmail@pplant.msu.edu
• Failure of any other critical system or service: Contact us via telephone at (517) 353-5515 or 3-5515 on-campus

There are many factors that impact service response times, but the most common reasons are listed below.

• Campus Service Request workloads vary over the calendar year. We usually take longer to process orders during our busiest times, including summer, the first month of fall semester, and near/during winter & spring break).
• There are many times when our department receives an unusually high amount of simultaneous trouble reports and/or special events. We do our best to prioritize our response to these events. Mitigation to this workload sometimes includes the hiring of temporary subcontractors for specific types of service.
  

• Prompt review may assist you in associating new charges with a new employee or event.
• Review may alert you to incomplete disconnects.
• Review may alert you to update location information to reflect correct location of telephones. This will optimize communication in the event an emergency required either '911' or 'R911' (public safety calls coming in).
• Lack of usage and/or disconnecting a telephone instrument within a building DOES NOT disconnect the actual telephone number from building. Monthly charges for service will continue until an order has been processed to completely remove the service.

• Call the telephone number and see if you recognize who answers it.
• Starting with the July 2007 billing, investigate details in the Telecommunication Service on-line billing to assist you in locating the telephone number.

You may do either of the following:

• Submit a Service Request to have a technician locate the telephone number for you. (You will be charged for technician time if the number turns out to be located in your department)
• Submit a Service Request to disconnect this line. It will be removed from your bill when the service has been disconnected.

This may be caused by either of the following:

• You may have an ISDN circuit that is billed in your MSU Physical Plant billing account or direct to your department from the carrier.
  • These circuits probably connect to the campus telephone system using what the carrier calls a Service Profile Identifier (SPID). A SPID looks similar to a traditional telephone number and it may be the telephone number listed with the usage on the monthly bill.
  • Look on the Telecommunication Service Detail Bill to determine if you are billed for an ISDN circuit that shows the same SPID.

Generally, your departmental account will be charged for a repair. This is true for repairs to departmental telephone systems, wiring in the building, and telephone number problems that occur within the building. However, most major campus telephone system and carrier/vendor-level repairs will not be charged your department account, assuming that the problem was not directly caused by equipment failure owned by the department.

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Information can be found in the Billing category on our website (www.telecom.pp.msu.edu) including the request for obtaining access, the link and instructions.

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MSU Physical Plant is responsible for maintaining campus buildings. That responsibility requires us to be involved in optimizing the safety and costs associated with performing building work, including:

• Actively define and follow building codes and standards
• Coordinate building systems and future plans for these systems
• Document asbestos and other materials that could have direct results on the safety/costs associated with building work
• Informed about safety standards that must be followed to ensure the safety of MSU staff