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Voice over IP at the London Borough of
Hounslow
From Computer Weekly, June 2006
‘A number of public sector organisations have invested in the
latest IP networks, enabling them to run voice and data traffic over the
same lines and reduce their telephony and data costs.
The London Borough of Hounslow is one such organisation, which has spent
the past 12 months extending its IP telephony facility to 2,500 users
across 30 sites.
Gerard Gough, IT contracts manager for Hounslow, said the council had
been using IP telephony for four years, with 50 users growing to 300
during that time as the council upgraded individual buildings. However,
scaling up the implementation was the challenge, and the council chose a
two-phase approach, with the end of phase two now approaching.
The first phase was to put in the core IP infrastructure and systems,
including IP-capable networks, Cisco Call Manager servers and IP phones.
Phase two centres on migrating 2,500 users from a legacy phone system to
IP phones.
Difficulties here included installing the new phones while keeping the
business running, database support issues, and “the little things you
tend to miss when you migrate several thousand people”, said Gough.
In terms of user satisfaction, Gough said, “We always get the odd person
who does not like it – but they are in the minority. People learn to use
handset facilities very quickly.”
The system has yielded huge cost savings for the council. On the
telephony side, Gough managed to halve the annual £600,000 budget for
maintaining the telephone systems from one year to the next, mainly
because two networks became one.
“For my return on investment, I was looking at a five-year plan, but the
savings that I am achieving from operating costs have paid for my
capital investments,” said Gough.
The council also added cost-effective CCTV to the IP network, and is
considering having videoconferencing in its reception areas, linking it
to the back office to support the process of signing official
documents.’
Arif Mohamed
13 June 2006
www.hounslow.gov.uk
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