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University of Central England
"This new system brings extra resilience to our phone
network. It also gives us the flexibility to allow for future
growth. VoIP is seen as the future of communications by many in the
industry and as a university it's important to look to the future.
Your Communications is a very forward-looking company with a good
reputation for reliability and that is why they were chosen to
provide the new system."
Colin Tennant, Director of IT, University of Central
England.
Your Communications has developed a service specifically for
the University drawing together a range of products services.
Background
The University of Central England (UCE) has more than 25,000
full and part-time students across eight campuses throughout
Birmingham. It offers more than 300 courses and its faculties
include Birmingham Conservatoire, Birmingham Institute of Art and
Design and the UCE Business School. It has a long tradition of
enhancing the employability of all those who study at UCE.
The Challenge
UCE handles more than 15,000 calls each day and this figure
increases to 23,000 during the peak university clearing period. As
the University has grown its communications system has come under
increasing pressure and a growing workload.
The University currently operates more than 1,800 extensions
over eight sites. It wanted to increase the resilience of its
system and prepare for its continuing growth.
As the University's main focus of investment is services for
its students it was keen that any new system should be highly cost
effective.
Our Answer
Your Communications has developed a service specifically for
the University drawing together a range of products and
services.
It initially provided a total of ten managed switches across
the University's sites. These support short-code dialling, direct
dial-in services and provide the University with a sophisticated
internal phone system covering all its campuses. They also provide
a highly robust service, as if there are any problems at individual
switches traffic can be distributed across the other switches to
compensate. The switches are fully managed and maintained by Your
Communications according to a strict Service Level Agreement.
These switches are connected to Your Communications' resilient
fibre-optic network through six separate Integrated Services
Digital Network (ISDN) 30 links for additional reliability. These
also link UCE to Your Communications' TRUSTnet service, a network
of more than 30 Universities and Hospitals throughout the Midlands,
Merseyside, Cheshire, Lancashire and Greater Manchester.
Your Communications is also working with the University to
trial the latest Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) technology at
two of its sites. This will carry both voice and Internet traffic
at the same time, allowing a single network to supply both
services. Once the trials are completed successfully the plan is to
roll out the technology to the other campuses.
In addition to this four further switches were added to
provided voice services to the Students Halls of residences. This
solution allowed the Students the ability to have phones in their
rooms, hence being contactable by their family and friends. The
solution included Pre-paid billing cards for out going calls; this
overcame the problems of chasing students for payments of bills. In
bound traffic was via 0870 numbers allowing the University to
generate income to cover the cost of running the Service
Benefits
End
Products: Voice
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