March 2008 — News
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Case Study: Bloomfield SD's Migration to Broadband and VoIP
The VoIP telephony service is enabling our teachers to stay more connected with parents, collaborate better with each other and feel safer knowing they can get help if they need it. Our new service provider delivers our WAN, Internet and VoIP telephony services--giving us one point of accountability.
At first, I was reluctant to install a new telephony system. Our previous installation had been very painful, taking many months to deploy. We had constant problems with our vendor and with the carrier supplying T1 connectivity to our schools. Another pain point with our legacy PBX solution was end user administration that required my team to travel onsite. When Trillion mentioned VoIP, I was also concerned about the overall impact it would have on my team. We had experience with PBX-based telephony, but none of us had experience with VoIP. I'd heard that VoIP could be complex to manage.
But after much discussion and reference checks we decided to implement the broadband WAN and VoIP telephony solution throughout the Bloomfield district, and my concerns turned out to be unfounded. The deployment across 10 sites involving more than 400 handsets took three days.
As for the impact, users really appreciated the new phones, and the new system was quickly adopted. Teachers liked the ability to stay in touch with parents from the privacy of their classroom. Teachers also said they felt more comfortable knowing they could communicate with the outside world during a lockdown. The system has also been used for safety measures. Recently, one of our teachers received obscene and threatening voice messages while at work. We used call records to trace the caller to a local motel where authorities were able to arrest the perpetrator. We wouldn't have been able to do that with our legacy system.
Our IT department has also benefited from the migration to the new network and VoIP. Instead of adding more work to my staff, our VoIP service has actually decreased our workload while helping us provide better service to our administrators and teachers. With Trillion's solution in place I've essentially added highly skilled network and VoIP engineers to my staff that work 24 hours a day. They monitor and manage the system around the clock. Unlike my previous vendor, my new VoIP service does not require me to go onsite to make end user changes. I can make end user changes, at any of our 10 sites, while sitting at my desk.
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About the author: Sondra Adams is the director of technology for Bloomfield School District, New Mexico. She can be reached at sadams@bsin.k12.nm.us.
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