November 2001 — Applications
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Making IP Telephony Affordable for the Iowa City Community School District
For several years, the Iowa City Community School District grappled with a way to equip every classroom with a telephone. The district could not afford the estimated $1 million to $1.5 million in capital expenditures for telephone wiring, not to mention the necessary operating funds for ongoing, monthly utility costs and service contracts. The district had a technology plan in place, but the district could not generate more money to pay for such additions. Capital funds for public schools are restricted to specific uses. General operating monies are used to hire teachers and pay for utilities and other ongoing expenses.
Associate Superintendent Jerald Palmer and SchoolNet Specialist Troy Wentzien recognized the need to provide expanded access to voice communication for faculty and staff in order to operate more efficiently. With the Internet becoming increasingly more important as a teaching tool, they decided to make data communication a priority, even with their limited resources. But while every classroom in the district had a computer with Internet access by 1995, a voice communication system remained an issue. Over the past five years, two new elementary schools were built with Internet access and telephones in every classroom. However, the separate data and phone lines proved extremely costly. Adding phones this way for the 22 remaining school buildings was not an option. Instead, Palmer explored the possibility of merging the data and voice technologies.
A Cost-Effective Solution
In 1999, Computer Solutions, the district's network consulting partner for more than a decade, presented Palmer and Wentzien with a cost-effective solution: IP telephony. IP telephony is the process of digitizing voice and sending a call over a data network, essentially using computer lines instead of separate phone lines. Computer Solutions demonstrated IP telephony for Palmer and Wentzien. They looked at two options: Cisco's soft phone, a phone image that appears on a computer screen; and the hard phone, or handset telephone, which plugs into a computer and shares the same cable.
Palmer allocated the estimated $500,000 in capital expenditures - approximately a third of the cost of installing a traditional phone system -for a handset phone system from Cisco, the leading provider of voice-over IP, and entered into a contract with Computer Solutions.
Computer Solutions installed 1,100 phones in all 24 of the district's buildings, a large installation of IP telephony for the Midwest. The Iowa City Community School District had a phone in every classroom within two months. "If there was a computer there, there was a phone," says Palmer of the installation. "It was that easy, but it's all very dependent on their expertise with Computer Solutions."
The central administration and technology center buildings were used in the pilot stage, allowing Computer Solutions to fine-tune the system parameters before turning on the system in all 24 buildings. The district's main number gets nearly 100 phone calls per hour, proving the system is able to support a high call volume. By the end of the 2000-2001 school year, every classroom was operational.
The district's old system supported around 450 phones and used about 170 phone lines, whereas now with the IP telephony system, calls placed outside the district utilize only 46 centrally located phone lines shared by all the buildings. Intradistrict calls do not require public phone lines, which helps alleviate the busy signals that were so prevalent with the old system.
