Warwickshire Shifts To VoIP

By Leo Blanco

TMCnet Contributing Editor

 

England’s Warwickshire County Council, in its initiative to minimize cost and enhance flexibility, has partnered with Lucent Alcatel (News - Alert) in rolling out Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) services. The said transition from traditional line might affect more than 80,000 users across the network including libraries, schools, transport depots, and social services offices.

 

Warwickshire county is considered as the heart of the country considering its location is in the center of England. It is best recognized as the birthplace of world renowned William Shakespeare.

 

To facilitate efficient rollout and improve productivity, 50 users at Shine Hall in Warwick are evaluating the technology before cascading to all users. Prior to full implementation, Warwickshire started using telephone lines over IP trunking to sidestep lease of costly BT.

 

“There is a 50 per cent saving on line rental per year. We have already done it in a few places and saved £1,800 a year on just one link,” said IT communications engineer Mark Woodward, in a news release.

 

VoIP is one the fastest growing technology in the market. In simple terms, it is routing of voice conversation using the Internet or other IP-based network. The bottom line is cost efficiency, portability, and additional features comparable to traditional phone lines such as call waiting, caller ID, and call forwarding.

 

However, Woodward believes that cost of implementation and cultural issues associated with training users in VoIP technology are big challenges facing the county council. In response, they are currently training non-technical staff to arrest possible setbacks.

 

IDC (News - Alert) senior analyst Rogier Mol foresees that massive VoIP transition in smaller councils is improbable.

 

“In general larger county councils are more open to the additional functionality that VoIP can offer especially over multiple locations,” Mol said in a news release.