Over the past three years, intensive analysis has been devoted
to understanding requirements for a telephone communication system
that will support UB’s academic and research mission and
prepare our University for the 21st century. UB currently
supports over 80 separate telephone systems that provide uneven
coverage, inconsistent feature sets, and are costly to maintain and
individually replace. As a major goal of the UB 2020 IT
Transformation process, a new feature-rich telephone technology has
been identified, and implementation plans were devised and
reviewed. We are pleased to announce the start of the
implementation of the UB 2020 IT Strategic Transformation project
to provide the campus with a uniform feature-rich telephone system,
the Voice-over Internet Protocol (VoIP) Project. Installations
are in progress.
The new VoIP (pronounced "voyp") system is based on technology
that combines voice communications on the same data network that
supports computing on campus. This technology is a proven and
cost effective industry direction. Deployments at other
universities and our own trial/pilot have demonstrated VoIP to be
robust and reliable.
The VoIP project plan is more than simple replacement of
existing telephone sets with new VoIP telephones. The nature of
VoIP technology will provide the following benefits to
departments:
- a direct dial number for every telephone
- published 645 and 829 numbers will be retained and migrated to
VoIP
- every phone will be given a direct seven digit number (phone
numbers will replace extension numbers)
- voice mail
- excellent sound quality
- elimination of department billing for usage
- many other common
features found on modern systems
Since VoIP technology integrates voice and data traffic on the
same network, an additional benefit to departments is a required
data network upgrade that precedes VoIP installation, which is
expected to improve computer network performance in many
buildings.
A VoIP team professional will contact each department in turn to
schedule a consultation meeting.
