26 Aug 2008
Fife Council has reduced its annual phone bill by £2m with the installation of a new voice over IP (VoIP) communications network.
The drop from a £2.5m to a £500,000 annual bill will allow the council to recoup a £7.5m capital investment by 2015.
Further reading
The system has provided some unexpected advantages, according to the council's programme director Linda Robertson.
“Following a minor fire, the ability to have phone numbers ‘follow’ us proved invaluable," she said.
"We were able to continue working without any disruption to council services and without the need for external IT support."
The council replaced more than 12,000 council phones across 350 sites with VoIP handsets.
Individuals are allocated numbers that will reach them wherever they are working, even if at home.
Budget savings from the project were spent on improving the health and safety and performance of IT networks in schools across the region.
The system comes from vendor Affiniti.
Having spent many paid minutes on hold and not being able to contact the relevant departments after being subjected to muzak of the worst variety, to be told on eventually getting through to main switchboard that the computers were down and when I asked if they did not have a paper directory I was advised this was not the case. What a bunch of incompetent muppets.
No doubt the suppliers of this new system are being held to account, or is it us, the council tax payers being held to account?
Posted by: Roy Pettigrew 01 Sep 2008
Have your say on this article
Newsletters
Latest stories from Management
Latest videos
You may also like
Management jobs
Technology Patent Wars
Case studies from large organisations across all sectors
... And rich media, and flexible working, and peaks in traffic ...
Upcoming Events
Join us for this Computing web seminar, in which the Head of BI at the Co-operative Group Nick Colebourn will be explaining just how he reigned in the Group’s sprawling database estate and how significant savings were realised and data quality improved as a result.
Date: 31 May 2012
Time: 11:00 AM
Live June 13th 11:00am: Register now. During this web seminar we will be looking at the sorts of incidents that can bring data centres grinding to a halt and what can be done about them.
Date: 13 Jun 2012
Time: 11:00 am
Receive the latest jobs direct to your inbox
Are you being paid what you are worth?
