Warwickshire turns to VoIP to cut costs
County council rolls out voice over internet protocol
Warwickshire County Council is switching to voice over IP (VoIP) at its 450 sites to save money and improve flexibility.
The technology is being tested by 50 users at Shire Hall in Warwick, with a further 15,000 extensions to be added across the county next month.
The main benefit of the project will be the ease of rollout, maintenance and flexibility of office moves, says IT communications engineer Mark Woodward.
‘Flexibility is an unquantifiable benefit to put to management, but we will save many man hours, which makes us much more productive,’ he said.
The IP system may ultimately have 80,000 users across the network, including 250 schools, 40 libraries, 100 social services offices, as well as transport depots, says Woodward.
The main challenges are cost of implementation, reliability and the cultural issues associated with helping users adjust to new technology.
‘We rolled out the system to non-technical staff and the slowest links on the network to prove that it works,’ said Woodward.
As a precursor to full VoIP implementation, Warwickshire started running telephone lines over IP trunking to avoid having to lease expensive BT lines.
‘There is a 50 per cent saving on line rental per year,’ said Woodward. ‘We have already done it in a few places and saved £1,800 a year on just one link.’
But widespread VoIP adoption by smaller councils is unlikely, says IDC senior analyst Rogier Mol. ‘In general larger county councils are more open to the additional functionality that VoIP can offer especially over multiple locations,’ he said.
The council’s VoIP technology is supplied by Lucent Alcatel.
What do you think? Email [email protected]
Further reading: