General Blogs HCST helps city improve telecommunications

11 November 2009, Barry Hassler

During a regular "Virtual CIO" review sessions with a Managed Services client -- a local city government -- the topic of phone systems and services came up. I learned at that time that among the city's three facilities, the phone system at one facility (Police Dept -- 5 analog lines) was particularly old, difficult to maintain, and the managers were getting very concerned the system was going to break down at any time, and they wouldn't be able to get spare parts or anything for it.

So the process begins by finding out more details about the situation -- not only that one phone system, but how does it tie into the other facilities?

The client's only real issue during the initial conversation was that the Police Chief would really like to have the receptionist at City Hall be able to answer his phone if he's not there. Other than that, they only have 5 existing phone lines there for a variety of special purposes -- nothing really fancy.

The phone system at City Hall, while not quite as old, was still working well, and since they had invested quite a bit in it, they really weren't looking to replace it.

The 3 facilities are network-connected via encrypted Virtual Private Networks with excellent reliability and low latency statistics.

I generally consider an asterisk-based solution first, and determine if it is a viability. I haven't encountered a situation yet that Asterisk isn't suited for, but for this application, it would suite perfectly. The first cut of a solution took into account the desire to replace that one phone system only, but leave the main PBX in place. A small PBX and VOIP phones at the Fire Department and a remote VOIP phone at City Hall for the receptionist there would be a possible solution. Future plans would add a larger (only slightly) PBX at City Hall, replace ALL the phones with VOIP phones, and interconnect the 2 systems with VPN-based trunks. Ideally though, I'd like to replace everything and move to a PRI right away, eliminating the need to multiple PBXs.

As we started discussing the potential solution, and especially how we could integrate two phone systems in the future, it became more apparent to the client that looking at a solution that DOES replace the primary phone system would be worthwhile to examine. To go that route also brings in other technology updates (replacing all the existing analog phone lines with a single PRI) that would make their operations run smoother.

For instance, with all the analog phone lines, they had established a number of hunt groups with phone numbers rolling over to each other, just to try to make sure callers never received busy signals. Although they advertised different phone numbers for various services (zoning, finance, tax), most of the numbers rolled into the same dial plan on the phone system anyway.

With familiarity of the various packages available from the telcos, I was able to approach their existing phone provider, describe the entire situation to them, and request they provide a quote for a single PRI to replace almost all the existing analog phone lines. We will keep a single analog line at each location for e911/fax purposes, but everything else would move to the single PRI solution.

With promotions, the cost of the PRI and single analog line at each location is almost the same (perhaps a tiny bit less) than the city is currently paying for all the analog phone lines. So on a recurring basis, there is no cost increase for a significant increase in capabilities.

The list of new or improved capabilities include:

If all goes as planned, this new system will be installed and operational before the end of 2009 -- the longest time delay is installation of a T1 line by AT&T for the PRI.

Total one-time costs, less than $10k.