Unplanned Outage - RingCentral SMS (Text Messaging) Outage

<div>Update, 6/9/2025: CIT staff continue to work with campus partners to find potential solutions that address legal, privacy, and risk management aspects of compliance.<br><br>Update: Although sending SMS or text messages has been approved for a limited number of RingCentral phone accounts, there is a significant amount of administrative overhead necessary to comply with the new wireless industry standards. CIT recognizes the inconvenience of this service interruption on business practices and continues working with campus partners on potential solutions to address the legal, privacy, and risk management aspects of compliance.&nbsp;<br><br>Previously, RingCentral reported a national SMS (text message) outage that impacted Cornell Ring clients on or about February 4, 2025.<br><br>Efforts to reinstate the RingCentral SMS Send feature--which was driven by amended wireless industry standards--led CIT to work with campus partners on the Privacy Statement and SMS and Text Messaging Terms of Services. A new application with these updates was submitted on February 27, 2025. That application was rejected on March 3, citing three errors that CIT researched and addressed in the next application on March 7. The March 7 submission failed but with a single error, and that item was revised for the next submission on March 11.&nbsp;<br><br>CIT met with RingCentral technical support specialists on March 13, 2025 to troubleshoot the SMS campaign request that was rejected on March 11. CIT shared that status update with campus partners in the Office of the General Counsel, the Privacy team, and the IT Security Office. That group reconvened on Monday, March 17, 2025 to discuss options. While working on next steps, the vendor submitted an appeal regarding the March 11 rejection decision.<br><br>The vendor submitted an appeal to The Campaign Registry regarding the March 11, 2025 decision rejecting the university's SMS registration request.&nbsp;<br><br>Around April 2, the vendor reported the appeal was successful, but the approved campaign has administrative requirements that may be difficult to meet. CIT continued working with campus partners on next steps.<br><br><br></div>