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By John Palatto
Officials with the Blue Valley School District in Overland Park, KS, showed the pioneer spirit of their homesteading ancestors when they decided to implement Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) technology in 2001.
Just three years ago, VoIP was still considered a new technology and relatively few public school districts were choosing it over the established PBX technology. However, local school officials decided a VoIP system was the best way to go when it was time to modernize the telephone system in district schools.
"They were looking for ways to reduce our phone costs and also to put phones in every classroom," said Ruth Weddle, Blue Valley School District (BVSD) executive director of information services. The district had an older telephone system, which didn't allow individual phones and phone lines to reach each classroom, Weddle said.
BVSD replaced the antiquated phone network with a Sprint-installed VoIP system that used Internet routers and switches to combine the district voice and data networks into a single integrated system.
With the existing telephone system, five to eight teachers shared phone lines, which at times could be inconvenient. It was a "sort of party line approach," Weddle said. "If one person was using it the other six or seven people couldn't use it," she said.
With the Sprint VoIP system every teacher has his or her own private line, which significantly improves security and emergency response, she said.
"We really needed to have a phone in every classroom readily available to teachers so they could call 911 or the office, or let somebody know about a stranger in the building or something suspicious happening," she said.
VoIP can deliver more than just two-way conversations. Digital phones on a VoIP network become information hubs delivering critical information to classroom teachers. Text alerts can be sent to an individual phone, a group of phones, or all phones. Phones in certain schools can be set to ring or be paged for any given crisis.
Every school district has to respond promptly to emergencies. It might be a medical emergency involving a student or staff member. "Not that it's necessarily life threatening, but it's critical that you get help immediately," Weddle noted.
But the school district didn't acquire its VoIP system to serve just the worst-case scenarios. It selected the technology because it was confident that VoIP would deliver day-to-day cost savings and business efficiency, says Weddle. In just its first year, BVSD's VoIP system saved the district $200,000.
"We kept hearing about VoIP and reading articles about it," she said. This convinced the district that it was worth investigating. The decisive business factor was that it would allow the district to converge their voice and data networks.
"This would keep us from having to wire the schools separately for both voice and the data," Weddle said. "We wanted to use the wiring we already had in the buildings to accommodate both voice and data."
So far the system has met the district's expectations in terms of cost savings, reliability, and efficiency. Besides giving all teachers a phone to contact someone for help, there are other security benefits to any institutionalized VoIP installation.
Sprint officials say VoIP gains a significant measure of reliability and security from Internet technology itself. The Internet was designed to keep running and transmitting data even when large portions of the network are knocked out in natural or man made disasters.
A VoIP system should keep running through a power outage, for example, as long as the customer's network has a backup power system and remains physically connected to the broader Internet.
But there is also plenty of security technology running in the background to ensure that VoIP transmissions are reliable and private, said John Pardun, manager of security solutions with Sprint in Reston, VA.
Security concerns vary from profession to profession and business to business, especially where confidentiality is a public concern and a legal requirement. "Certainly we have seen a greater emphasis on security in the area of finance, healthcare, government, and insurance," he said.
Every organization needs to have their VoIP networks protected by firewalls and secure gateways to fend off the common threats of Internet worms and viruses, Pardun noted. But other organizations may want to provide higher levels of security with virtual private networks (VPNs) that limit who can access a network or with encryption that ensures that voice and data communications won't be compromised.
"What we are talking about is that security tends to be an enabler to doing business," Pardun said. Having an appropriate level of security ensures that an organization will be able to realize the full economic and business benefits of operating a converged voice and data network.
Weddle says she's been pleasantly surprised with the success of the district's VoIP system. Of the 30 schools in the district, all but one is part of the district's VoIP network. The last one is expected to be brought on board by this fall.
"We were pioneers," Weddle said. But the district was convinced with the cost savings and improvements in security and convenience that, "We would be better off going with newer technology than older (PBX) technology."
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